Turn modern English into the English of Chaucer's London, or paste a passage of The Canterbury Tales and read it in plain modern English. One box, both directions, free.
Middle English was spoken from roughly 1100 to 1500, after the Norman Conquest flooded English with French words and most of the old case endings wore away. It is the English of Chaucer, Langland's Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. You can almost read it - until the spelling, the pronounced final -e and words like "nyce" (foolish) trip you up. It sits between Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and Shakespeare's Early Modern English, and this translator handles both directions.
Everyday courtesies and famous lines in Chaucerian spelling. Pronunciations are approximate reconstructions: sound every letter, give final -e a light "uh", and say "gh" like the ch in Scottish "loch".
Instead of sticking -e on random words, translator.im draws on real Middle English vocabulary, spelling and syntax, modelled on Chaucer's London English.
Expect forms like knyght, yow, wolde and seyde, and words that later disappeared or changed - the texture of a real 14th-century text.
Write modern English to get Middle English, or swap and paste Chaucer, Malory or Gawain to get a clear modern translation.
In Middle English "nyce" means foolish, "sely" means innocent or blessed, and "wood" means mad. The model translates them by sense, not by look.
Middle English had no single standard. Ask for a northern or West Midlands flavour (the dialect of Sir Gawain) and spelling and word choice will shift.
Image mode reads printed Middle English from a textbook page or screenshot in your browser. Review the recognised text before translating; manuscript hands are not reliably read.
Copy with one tap, or use Listen to hear it in your device's modern voice - fun, though a real Chaucerian reading sounds quite different.
Mostly literature class - and a fair amount of medieval fun.
Paste the opening lines and get a modern English version to check your reading before the seminar.
Chaucer's pilgrims are summed up in a line or two. Translate them to see what he is really saying about the Clerk, the Knight or the Wife of Bath.
Renaissance faires, tabletop campaigns and LARP characters get a convincing late-medieval voice.
Writing a novel set in the 14th century? Draft a few lines of authentic-feeling dialogue, then blend them into modern prose.
Three keys that unlock most of Chaucer.
The k in knyght is pronounced, gh is a throaty sound like Scottish "loch", and final -e is often a light syllable - which matters for Chaucer's metre. Vowels sound closer to Italian or German than to modern English.
Middle English had no dictionary standard, so the same word appears as "you", "yow" and "yowe". If you paste text from a manuscript-based edition, the translator copes with these variants.
Gentil means noble, nyce means foolish, sely means innocent or blessed, and wood means mad. When a familiar-looking word seems odd in context, check the translation rather than guessing.
No account, no install. Write modern English for Chaucerian, or paste Chaucer for modern English - free.