English to Ancient Greek Translator

Greek tattoos go wrong a lot. Missing accents, modern spellings, the odd letter that isn't Greek at all. So this English to Ancient Greek translator has no AI in it. Every word comes from Wiktionary's Ancient Greek dictionary, 69,171 entries the day I counted, 24 October 2026. Famous lines come out exactly as they were written at Delphi, by Homer, in the Gospel of John. Under each one sits a Say it line in our letters, no alphabet lessons needed.

How Do You Say Know Thyself in Ancient Greek?

Γνῶθι σεαυτόν. Gnōthi seauton. Two words. Know, as an order, and yourself. It was carved at Apollo's temple in Delphi, which is a funny thing to read on your way in to ask a god whether you should marry the neighbor's daughter or invade Sicily. Type know thyself and those two words come back, breathing marks and all.

Famous Lines, Spelled the Way the Greeks Wrote Them

Copy-paste lists online love to lose the little marks, and these keep every one. The tool adds a Say it line under each one when you translate.

English	Ancient Greek	Where it's from
Hello	Χαῖρε	Everyday greeting
Goodbye	Ἔρρωσο	Letters and farewells
How are you?	Τί πράσσεις;	Everyday greeting
I love you	Φιλῶ σε	Built from checked forms
Thank you	Χάριν οἶδά σοι	Built from checked forms
Know thyself	Γνῶθι σεαυτόν	Temple of Apollo, Delphi
Nothing in excess	Μηδὲν ἄγαν	Temple of Apollo, Delphi
Come and take them	Μολὼν λαβέ	Leonidas, via Plutarch
Make haste slowly	Σπεῦδε βραδέως	Old proverb
I have found it	Εὕρηκα	Archimedes

Molōn labe ends up on gym shirts and truck bumpers. Leonidas, Thermopylae, a Persian king wanting the Spartans' weapons. Two words back: come and take them. Funny detail: we only have it from Plutarch, writing nearly six hundred years later, so it's a quote of a quote that somebody's now wearing to leg day.

What Went Wrong While I Built It

First thing that broke was a shortcut I'd made for the opening of John's gospel. You'd type the chapter and verse, the way it's printed in a Bible, and I typed exactly that and got <john> back. The tool throws out numbers and colons before it looks anything up, so my clever shortcut never had a chance. Gone. Type in the beginning was the word instead, or paste the Greek.

Thank you took longer. No fixed Greek phrase for it, oddly. Closest everyday way: χάριν οἶδά σοι, I know grace to you, more or less I owe you one. Not a quote. Three checked forms stuck together. Better that than slapping ευχαριστώ on it, which is modern Greek wearing a toga and hoping nobody in the museum gift shop line notices the difference.

Greek won't give you one word for love. Ἀγάπη, the steady kind, the one the New Testament picks for God. Ἔρως, wanting someone. Φιλία, mates. Plain love in the box gets you ἀγάπη. Mean the other two? Check the card. Sending ἔρως to your gran on her birthday is a choice, and it's one you'll be explaining at every family dinner for the rest of the year.

English	Ancient Greek
Soul	Ψυχή
Word, reason	Λόγος
Wisdom	Σοφία
Virtue	Ἀρετή
Happiness	Εὐδαιμονία
Truth	Ἀλήθεια
Hope	Ἐλπίς
Freedom	Ἐλευθερία
Chaos	Χάος
Order, world	Κόσμος
Fate	Μοῖρα
Immortal	Ἀθάνατος

Anything the phrasebook hasn't got comes back word by word, in your order, with a warning attached. Try my friend is happy and you'll see ἐμός φίλος εἰμί εὐδαίμων. Real words, wrong shape. A Greek teacher would rewrite half of it in red pen, so don't ink that one until somebody who actually reads Plato has had a look at it over coffee.

Attic, Koine and Homer

Three Greeks live in here. Plato's Attic. The Koine of the New Testament, which is why John 1:1 made the cut. Homer's, older and stranger, padded with extra syllables so the lines keep their beat when a singer's halfway through a battle scene and running out of breath. Plain dictionary words lean Attic, same as most school courses.

Χ is k with a puff, kh. Φ, ph. Θ, th. Η and ω get a bar on top in Say it because they're long.

Vikings more your thing? The English to Old Norse Translator. Westeros? The High Valyrian Language Translator. The rest of the old and made-up tongues hang out on the translators page, and every Greek word here traces back to Wiktionary's Ancient Greek dictionary.

Ancient Greek, Answered

Can Google Translate do Ancient Greek? No. Modern Greek only. Paste Plato in and it reads him like this morning's paper from Athens. Alphabet right, plenty else wrong.

How do you say hello in Ancient Greek? Χαῖρε, khaire. Literally rejoice. Works as goodbye too. A whole room? Χαίρετε.

How do you say I love you in Ancient Greek? Φιλῶ σε, philō se. I love, you. Built from checked forms, since no famous line says it outright, which surprised me too.

Is Ancient Greek the same as modern Greek? Same alphabet, different language in a lot of ways. In 1982 Greece dropped the breathing marks and all but one accent, and Greek schoolkids still take the old language as a separate subject.

What is Koine Greek? The Greek everybody spoke around the Mediterranean after Alexander. The New Testament's in it. John 1:1 opens Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, in the beginning was the Word, and the tool gives you the whole verse.

What is the most accurate Ancient Greek translator? For famous lines? One that copies the sources letter for letter. This one does. New sentences? Anything that adds endings is guessing. This one hands you checked dictionary words and says so.