Is the Yiddish document translator free?

You can try it free, with no account needed, and signing in gives you a larger daily allowance. Pro and Scholar are there for longer documents and regular use.

Can it read handwritten Yiddish letters and old scans?

Scans and photos (JPG, PNG, HEIC, or a scanned PDF) get text recognition before translation. Clean printed Yiddish reads well, in YIVO or older spelling. Microfilmed newspapers, worn books and the old semi-cursive type of earlier printing are weaker, and handwriting varies most of all: a neat postcard may read almost entirely, a hurried letter may yield fragments. Upload flat, well-lit photos of each page, and check names, places and dates against the original, since ב and כ, ד and ר, ו and ז, and ה and ח are easily confused in print, and cursive adds confusions of its own.

How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?

Fast is for gist: skimming a memoir or working out what a letter is about. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the right choice for anything you will keep or publish: it reads the Hebrew-Aramaic component as the words they are rather than sounding out letters, resolves older and Soviet spellings, handles dialect forms and the German-heavy vocabulary of the old press, and keeps the tone of a personal letter. It is not a certified translation, and for a document with legal weight a certified translator is still needed.

Will the translation keep my document's layout?

The translator produces a translated PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel or EPUB file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. Right-to-left text, mixed Hebrew and Latin script and numbers are handled in the formatted output; check that tables of names have kept their columns.

Can I use the translation for a citizenship, restitution or archive application?

Not as a certified translation. Applications for Polish, Lithuanian, German or Austrian citizenship by descent, and restitution or archive requests, usually turn on civil records that are in Polish, Russian, German or Hungarian rather than Yiddish, and where a certified translation is required it must come from a translator who signs for it. Use this tool to read the Yiddish material around those records, the letters, memoirs and community documents, to understand what you have and to decide what needs certifying.

Which Yiddish does it read: YIVO, older spelling, Soviet, Hasidic, Litvish or Poylish?

All of it is Yiddish and the translation follows the document. Spelling systems are the visible difference (YIVO, the older German-influenced spelling, Soviet phonetic spelling without final letters, contemporary Hasidic usage), and dialect shows in the older and Hasidic spellings more than in YIVO, which normalises the vowels. Going into Yiddish, check spelling conventions and word choice against your readers' expectations: YIVO for secular and academic readers, community conventions for Hasidic readers.

What file types can I upload?

PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX, XLSX and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters. A whole Yizkor book runs past the Free and Pro limit, so upload the chapters about your town or use Scholar.

Yiddish PDF & Document Translator — English ↔ Yiddish

Translate English to Yiddish or Yiddish to English while preserving your document’s layout. Upload your file, choose the target language, and get a natural translation that keeps the meaning of the original.

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See “Keep formatting” in action

Real examples of the “Keep formatting” option: original on the left, translated document on the right. Click either page to enlarge.

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A civil complaint filed in Mexico City, Spanish to English. Caption block, numbered pleadings, the evidence table and the signature block all keep their places. — Original — A civil complaint filed in Mexico City, Spanish to English. Caption block, numbered pleadings, the evidence table and the signature block all keep their places.

An Italian birth certificate, photographed rather than scanned. The framed masthead, the field grid, the marginal annotations and the round seal all hold their positions. — Original — An Italian birth certificate, photographed rather than scanned. The framed masthead, the field grid, the marginal annotations and the round seal all hold their positions.

A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact. — Original — A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact.

A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact. — Translation — A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact.

A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged. — Original — A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged.

A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged. — Translation — A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged.

A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register. — Original — A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register.

A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register. — Translation — A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register.

A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place. — Original — A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place.

A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place. — Translation — A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place.

How Yiddish documents come out

Upload a Yiddish PDF, Word file, scan or phone photo and read it in English: a family letter or postcard, a chapter of a Yizkor book, a page of the Forverts, a memoir, a landsmanshaft minute book, a Hasidic pamphlet or a story by Sholem Aleichem. The translated file aims to keep the layout, right-to-left text and all, so a columned newspaper page or a two-column memorial book should still look like itself. English into Yiddish works too, for notices, letters and learning material aimed at Yiddish-reading communities.

Yiddish is written right to left in the Hebrew alphabet, and how it is spelled depends on when and where the document was printed. The YIVO standard of 1937, used by most secular publishers, textbooks and scholarly editions today, spells the Germanic and Slavic vocabulary phonetically with marked letters (אַ, אָ, ײַ, פֿ, וּ, יִ) and keeps the Hebrew and Aramaic component (shabes שבת, emes אמת, khasene חתונה) in its traditional spelling, so those words cannot be sounded out letter by letter. Older printing, including much of the pre-war and early American press, used German-influenced spellings with silent letters, and the Forverts kept its own house spelling for much of the twentieth century. Soviet publications for several decades spelled the Hebrew-origin words phonetically and dropped the final letter forms. Contemporary Hasidic publishing follows its own conventions and often omits the YIVO marks. All of these are the same language and all can be uploaded; what changes is how much checking a passage needs. Text extraction is the other issue: some Hebrew-script PDFs store their text in visual rather than logical order, so copied text comes out reversed, and the pasekh and komets marks can sit as separate characters. Scanned pages get text recognition before translation. Clean modern type reads well; microfilmed newspapers, books set in the old semi-cursive vaybertaytsh type, and handwriting are where quality drops. Yiddish handwriting is the Hebrew cursive, and a letter written in haste in 1932 is a challenge for anyone, so treat handwriting results as a starting point for deciphering.

Translate your document and keep its structure

The translator keeps your file’s structure while translating the text in context. The downloaded format depends on the source file.

PDFs and scanned pages: The translated PDF follows the page visually, with translated pages rendered as images. Selectable PDF text and identical fonts are not guaranteed.
Word documents and PowerPoint presentations: Start with DOCX or PPTX when you have it. Native paragraphs, table text and slide text can stay editable in the corresponding file format. Translated text inside pictures remains image content; review text wrapping and font changes in your editor.
Excel workbooks and EPUB books: Use the original XLSX or unprotected EPUB for a translated workbook or ebook. Review formulas, numbers and text cells in a workbook; check chapter order, navigation and text flow in your ebook reader.

What people translate to and from Yiddish

Family letters, postcards and photographs

The most personal uploads are the letters relatives sent from Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Romania to America, Argentina, Palestine or South Africa, the postcards, and the inscriptions on the backs of photographs. They are written in Hebrew cursive, in dialect, with formulaic openings and closings (libe kinder, a hartsikn grus), regards to a list of names, dates by the Jewish calendar or in the Julian calendar of the Russian Empire (thirteen days behind the Gregorian in the early twentieth century), and a mix of Yiddish, Hebrew blessings and the occasional Polish or Russian word. Photograph each page flat and well lit. Results vary with the hand: clear writing often reads, a hurried letter may yield fragments, and names, places and dates are yours to check.

Yizkor books and memoirs

Well over a thousand Yizkor books were published after the war by survivors and landsmanshaftn, mostly in Yiddish and Hebrew, often both in one volume, with town histories, lists of the murdered, maps and photographs. Only some chapters have been translated by volunteers, so genealogists upload the untranslated pages for their town, the necrology lists, and the memoirs that mention a family. The two-column layout and the mix of scripts should survive in the translated file. Necrologies need care: names appear in Yiddish and Hebrew forms, with abbreviations such as ז״ל and הי״ד, and family relationships stated in a fixed formula. The Hebrew sections belong on the Hebrew document page.

Hebrew documents

Newspapers, periodicals and archives

Researchers, journalists and family historians read the Yiddish press: the Forverts, Der Tog and the Morgn-Zhurnal in New York, Haynt and Der Moment in Warsaw, the Bund's Folkstsaytung, and the literary journals. Digitised runs from the Historical Jewish Press and the Yiddish Book Center's library come as scanned PDFs, often with a rough text layer, so check names and dates against the page image. Newspaper Yiddish of the period is heavy with German-style vocabulary and spelling, with Americanisms in the New York papers, and columns, advertisements and serialised fiction share a page; the translated PDF aims to keep the columns so you can follow one story down the page.

Literature, Hasidic texts and community notices

Students of Yiddish literature upload Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Mendele, Bashevis Singer, Grade and Sutzkever, and older devotional works such as the Tsene-rene, for reading alongside a course. In the other direction, English into Yiddish is a live need: public health notices, school letters, tenancy information and product leaflets for Hasidic communities in Brooklyn, Rockland County, Stamford Hill, Antwerp and Jerusalem, and learning material for a growing number of adult learners. Going into Yiddish, decide who the readers are: YIVO spelling suits secular and academic readers, while Hasidic readers are used to their own conventions, so have a reader from the community check the result before printing.

What to watch for in Yiddish document translation

Most trouble with Yiddish documents starts with the script and ends with the names. The Hebrew and Aramaic component is spelled etymologically, so a system that reads letter by letter produces nonsense for shabes, mishpokhe or khasene; older and Soviet spellings move the same words around; and visual-order PDFs deliver text backwards. Abbreviations marked with ׳ or ״ are everywhere in letters and memorial books: ר׳ (reb), ז״ל (of blessed memory), ע״ה, הי״ד (for the murdered), שליט״א and נ״י (for the living), בע״ה (with God's help), and they should be expanded, not transliterated. Dates come in the Jewish calendar written in letter-numerals (תרצ״ט is 5699, autumn 1938 to autumn 1939), sometimes in the Julian calendar, and sometimes in both. Names have no single spelling: Moyshe, Moshe and Moses; Yankev, Jakub and Jacob; Khaye, Chaja and Ida; and towns carry a Yiddish name beside the Polish, Russian, Lithuanian or Ukrainian one (Brisk for Brest, Vilne for Vilnius, Lemberg for Lviv), so a translation should keep the form in the document and identify the place rather than pick one. Vocabulary is layered: Germanic, Slavic and Hebrew words sit together, the old press used German-style words that later Yiddish rejected, and a phrase can be ironic in a way a literal reading misses (a khokhem is a wise man, or the opposite). Keep the register of a personal letter, and read every name against the original.

Yiddish document translation FAQ

Is the Yiddish document translator free?: You can try it free, with no account needed, and signing in gives you a larger daily allowance. Pro and Scholar are there for longer documents and regular use.
Can it read handwritten Yiddish letters and old scans?: Scans and photos (JPG, PNG, HEIC, or a scanned PDF) get text recognition before translation. Clean printed Yiddish reads well, in YIVO or older spelling. Microfilmed newspapers, worn books and the old semi-cursive type of earlier printing are weaker, and handwriting varies most of all: a neat postcard may read almost entirely, a hurried letter may yield fragments. Upload flat, well-lit photos of each page, and check names, places and dates against the original, since ב and כ, ד and ר, ו and ז, and ה and ח are easily confused in print, and cursive adds confusions of its own.
How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?: Fast is for gist: skimming a memoir or working out what a letter is about. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the right choice for anything you will keep or publish: it reads the Hebrew-Aramaic component as the words they are rather than sounding out letters, resolves older and Soviet spellings, handles dialect forms and the German-heavy vocabulary of the old press, and keeps the tone of a personal letter. It is not a certified translation, and for a document with legal weight a certified translator is still needed.
Will the translation keep my document's layout?: The translator produces a translated PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel or EPUB file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. Right-to-left text, mixed Hebrew and Latin script and numbers are handled in the formatted output; check that tables of names have kept their columns.
Can I use the translation for a citizenship, restitution or archive application?: Not as a certified translation. Applications for Polish, Lithuanian, German or Austrian citizenship by descent, and restitution or archive requests, usually turn on civil records that are in Polish, Russian, German or Hungarian rather than Yiddish, and where a certified translation is required it must come from a translator who signs for it. Use this tool to read the Yiddish material around those records, the letters, memoirs and community documents, to understand what you have and to decide what needs certifying.
Which Yiddish does it read: YIVO, older spelling, Soviet, Hasidic, Litvish or Poylish?: All of it is Yiddish and the translation follows the document. Spelling systems are the visible difference (YIVO, the older German-influenced spelling, Soviet phonetic spelling without final letters, contemporary Hasidic usage), and dialect shows in the older and Hasidic spellings more than in YIVO, which normalises the vowels. Going into Yiddish, check spelling conventions and word choice against your readers' expectations: YIVO for secular and academic readers, community conventions for Hasidic readers.
What file types can I upload?: PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX, XLSX and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters. A whole Yizkor book runs past the Free and Pro limit, so upload the chapters about your town or use Scholar.

See “Keep formatting” in action

Real examples of the “Keep formatting” option: original on the left, translated document on the right. Click either page to enlarge.

1 / 6

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