Old English Translator (Shakespearean Style)
Turn your everyday English into Shakespearean-style "thee/thou" English for free. Converts "you" to "thou," adds "prithee" and "forsooth," and picks the right thou/thee/thy/thine automatically.
What is this Old English translator?
This tool converts everyday English into the kind of archaic, Shakespearean-flavored English you hear in period dramas, Renaissance fairs, and fantasy games — swapping "you" for "thou," "your" for "thy," and sprinkling in words like "prithee" and "forsooth." Beyond simple word-for-word substitution, it also occasionally opens a sentence with an archaic interjection and closes it with a period-appropriate flourish, so the result reads less like a find-and-replace and more like a deliberate style.
One important caveat: this is not a scholarly translation into genuine Old English (Anglo-Saxon, spoken roughly from the 5th to the 12th century), which is grammatically and lexically so different that a modern English speaker would barely recognize a word of it. What this tool actually reproduces is "thee/thou/dost/prithee"-style Early Modern English — the flavor most people mean when they say "Old English" in casual conversation, popularized by Shakespeare and King James Bible translations. It works purely through dictionary-based word and phrase substitution, the same rule-based approach used by comparable fan translators.
How to use the Old English translator
- Type or paste your English text Enter the sentence or paragraph you want converted in the box on the left. Split multiple sentences with a period, exclamation mark, or question mark and each one is converted individually.
- Check the converted result The result appears on the right as you type. Pronouns and common words get swapped for their archaic equivalents — "you" becomes "thou," "are" becomes "art," and so on.
- Try another version Click "Generate another version" to re-roll which words get converted and which interjections are added — the same input produces a different result each time.
- Copy the result Click "Copy" to put the converted text on your clipboard, ready to paste straight into a social post or message.
Tips for getting more out of it
- This tool is built for English input only. Text in other languages has no matching dictionary entries, so it will pass through largely unconverted.
- Every time you click "Generate another version," the set of words that get converted and the interjections that get added are re-rolled at random, so keep clicking until you land on a phrasing you like.
- Multi-word phrases like "you are" and "you have" are converted together into natural combinations like "thou art" and "thou hast," rather than being translated word by word.
- This is a fun, rule-based conversion, not a grammatically rigorous reconstruction — word substitutions like "are" → "art" ignore the fact that "art" was historically reserved for the second person singular.
Where this Old English generator comes in handy
Fantasy roleplay and creative writing
Quickly give tabletop RPG dialogue or a medieval-fantasy character lines an authentic-sounding period flavor without hand-crafting every sentence.
Renaissance faire and Halloween posts
Convert a social media caption before posting about a Renaissance faire, Halloween event, or costume party for a playful, in-character touch.
A gentle way to explore archaic vocabulary
Comparing your original sentence with the converted version is a low-stakes way to pick up words like "thou," "thy," and "doth" before tackling Shakespeare's actual plays.
Side-by-side with our other text style tools
Run the same sentence through our Zalgo glitch text generator or fancy text generator to compare completely different transformation styles.
Glossary of archaic terms
- thou
- The archaic second-person singular subject pronoun, equivalent to modern "you." It is the word most people associate with Shakespearean-style speech.
- thee
- The archaic second-person singular object pronoun, equivalent to modern "you." Used as in "I love thee."
- thy / thine
- Archaic possessive forms equivalent to modern "your." "Thy" was historically used before a consonant sound (thy friend), and "thine" before a vowel sound or on its own (thine eyes).
- prithee
- A contraction of "I pray thee," equivalent to modern "please."
- forsooth
- An archaic interjection meaning "truly" or "indeed," typically used at the start of a sentence for emphasis or surprise.
- dost / doth
- Archaic conjugations of "do" and "does." "Dost" was used in the second person singular (thou dost), and "doth" in the third person singular (he doth).
- Early Modern English
- The stage of the English language spoken from roughly the late 15th to the 17th century — the English of Shakespeare's plays — in which pronouns like thou/thee and verb forms like dost were still in everyday use.
Frequently asked questions
Side Note — Why did "thou" fall out of use?
It might seem counterintuitive, but "thou" wasn't actually the formal, elevated word in Shakespeare's day — it was often the more intimate, everyday one. In Middle English, under French influence, "you" became the polite form used for social superiors or when addressing more than one person, while "thou" was reserved for family, close friends, or, conversely, for addressing someone of lower social standing, sometimes with a dismissive or condescending edge.
That distinction gradually eroded over the 17th century, and English settled on "you" as its sole second-person pronoun. Ironically, that left "thou" stranded with an aura of formality, solemnity, or poetic weight in modern ears — an impression reinforced by the fact that English Bible translations from the Reformation era, such as the King James Version, kept using "thou" consistently when addressing God, long after everyday speech had moved on.
Interestingly, some Quakers deliberately kept using "thou" for everyone, regardless of social rank, precisely because they objected to the class-based distinction between "you" and "thou" on religious egalitarian grounds — a small act of linguistic protest that outlived the broader shift. Knowing that history can add a bit of texture the next time you read a line of Shakespeare.