Scottish Translator

Sauchiehall Street, November, a bus that's twenty minutes late. You'd text "the weather is grey and wet again." This Scottish translator made it "The weather's dreich and wet again." One word doing the work of three, and grumpier for it.

It reads the other way too. Paste in a text from your pal in Glasgow and out comes plain English, so you finally know what "gonnae no dae that" was about.

No Switch to Flip

Mine works out the direction by itself, which I didn't expect to get right first time (it did, oddly). Feed it English and Scots comes out. Your gran's text moaning about the 8:12 out of Waverley? That comes back as English. Two runs rarely match word for word. Keep whichever sounds more like somebody's uncle after a second pint.

What Does Dreich Mean?

It's the grey, wet weather that soaks you without ever properly raining. Glasgow in November? Dreich. A bank holiday at the beach in Ayr? Dreich, nine times out of ten.

Folk love the word. The Scottish Book Trust ran a vote in 2019 for the most iconic Scots word, 1,895 votes came in, and dreich took 259 of them. Glaikit came second. Scunnered was third, which feels right for a country where people will happily stand in the rain outside a chippy in Leith and argue about which word for that rain is the best one.

Words I Fed It

Weather first, obviously. Drookit is the one I'd steal for daily use.

Scots	English
dreich	grey, wet, gloomy weather
baltic	freezing cold
drookit	soaked through
wee	small
aye	yes
ken	know
dinnae / cannae	don't / can't
bairn / wean	child (wean is more Glasgow)
piece	sandwich
messages	shopping
greet	cry
glaikit	daft, gormless
haver	talk nonsense
wheesht	be quiet
braw	great, lovely
the now	right now
dinnae fash	don't worry

Straight From the Box

These are copied out of the tool with nothing tidied. Lowercase stays lowercase.

• stop talking nonsense and be quiet → Stop havering and wheesht.
• i'm going to make a sandwich, want one? → Ah'm gonnae mak a piece, want one?
• remember to buy milk when you go shopping → mind tae buy milk when ye go tae the shops
• my grandma is really nice → ma granny is pure braw

And backwards, Scots in:

• Whit ye daein the now? Ah'm awfy bored → What are you doing right now? I'm very bored.
• Gonnae no dae that, ya wee glaikit numpty → Don't do that, you silly fool.
• Dinnae fash yersel, it'll be braw the morra → Don't worry, it'll be great tomorrow.

"A piece" for a sandwich is my favourite (the old Glasgow tenement joke is a mum chucking a jam piece out the window to a kid playing down in the street). Ask for a piece in an English café and you'll get a funny look and maybe a slice of cake.

Two Things It Got Wrong First

Early on it just respelled English. "i'm going to the store later" came back as "Ah'm gonnae head tae the store later." Scots spelling, sure, but no Scot has ever gone to the store. It's the shops, always plural, even if it's one Greggs. I gave it a short list of real swaps and a ride turned into a lift as well.

The backwards mode was clunky. "pure baltic the day" became "very freezing today," which is English nobody has ever said out loud. One line asking for natural English fixed it: really freezing.

Is This Scots, or Just an Accent?

Bit of both, and Scots folk hop between them mid-sentence. Rabbie Burns wrote in it. The 2011 census asked about it, for the first time ever. Scottish English is more like Reporting Scotland on the telly: standard words, a Scottish voice, maybe an aye if the weather's bad. I aimed this tool in between. Full Doric from Aberdeen would lose most readers by the second line, me included. Wikipedia's article on the Scots language has the long history.

For the other end of the island, the British Slang Translator does London and the rest of England. The Cockney Rhyming Slang Translator is pure East End. More voices on the translators page.

Asked by Folk Who Aren't From Here

What does wee mean? Small. Though a "wee minute" can last half an hour, and a "wee drink" is rarely wee.

What does baltic mean in Scotland? Freezing. As in the Baltic Sea, which is cold, and so is Glasgow in February when the wind comes off the Clyde.

Is it the same as a Scottish accent generator? Not quite. It writes text, so it swaps words and some spellings. The accent's your job.

Will it swear? Nope, and Scots has some cracking swears. Numpty is about as rude as it gets.

Does it do Doric or Gaelic? No to both. Doric is the northeast dialect, and Gaelic is a different language entirely, with nothing to do with English. This one's Lowland Scots, mostly Glasgow and Edinburgh.