# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Writing, Stories, Linguistics, Toponymy and other wordy stuff ! >  Ancient Greek

## moutarde

I was curious if anybody here knows of any websites or resources for translating english into any form of classical greek?

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## Steel General

A quick bit of GOOGLE-Fu turned up _this_ - not sure if it's what you're looking for tho.

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## moutarde

Yeah I tried asking Mr.Google for both ancient and classical greek, but without much luck.  The closest I found was one called kypros (sp?) that you could check a box for ancient greek instead of modern, but it had such a small dictionary built into it that I couldn't found any words that would translate...

It was a pretty frustrating search, so I asked here in the hopes that somebody else may have already found something I could use, but if not, I'll just mangle some modern greek and call it creativeness  :Wink:

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## ravells

Sorry no, but it does remind me of funny a story a friend once told me. He had a friend who was travelling to Greece and wanted to learn the language. He went to the local library and found a book on learning greek and studied it. When he got to greece he was at Pireaus and asked some guys at the warf about the time of the next boat to an island he wanted to travel to. They fell about laughing. Turns out he had learned middle Greek so to our ears what he said would have sounded like: 'Prithee, cans't thou tell me what time a boat will travel to yonder isle?'

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## moutarde

Haha that's awesome Ravells  :Very Happy:

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## Ascension

I kinda wish more people talked like that  :Smile:

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## Ghostman

Etymologica.com might be of some use.

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## moutarde

Not exactly what I was looking for, but that is nonetheless an awesome site Ghostmas  :Smile:   I'm sure I'll be able to make use of it, thanks!

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## Talroth

> Sorry no, but it does remind me of funny a story a friend once told me. He had a friend who was travelling to Greece and wanted to learn the language. He went to the local library and found a book on learning greek and studied it. When he got to greece he was at Pireaus and asked some guys at the warf about the time of the next boat to an island he wanted to travel to. They fell about laughing. Turns out he had learned middle Greek so to our ears what he said would have sounded like: 'Prithee, cans't thou tell me what time a boat will travel to yonder isle?'


I had a classmate who did something like that, only he some how managed to study old English instead. That was a very confusing first year in an English speaking country for the poor guy. (When he first introduced himself, we thought he was speaking German.)

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## Kelethril

Well it's very difficult to find a site like that...it will probably do a work like Systran does which in most of the cases is a failure(but at least it's funny  :Razz: )
If it's not that much of a big text you want to translate or you're stuck somewhere i'm greek so pm me i may be able to help a bit at least with the modern XD

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## spyrusthevirus

don't know if it helps, If you don't ask for much things I may translate them for you. I'm from Greece, ancient greek is part of the school courses  :Smile:

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## moutarde

Thanks for the offers, but I don't think I need to bother you guys with that  :Wink:   The etymology for a lot of continent and country names come from classical greek, and if you've happened to take a look at the map I'm working on, I've got a LOT of places to name....  But even if it's not entirely accurate, google translate can give me enough modern greek to mangle it something more classical sounding  :Very Happy:

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## spyrusthevirus

ok then good luck  :Very Happy:

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## Adanvo

If you need it maybe another time:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...rue&lang=greek

This site is searching your english words in greek texts and is showing you the passages of ancient texts AND translations into ancient greek...but i think the main problem is, that the system shows you the greek words in greek letters  :Wink: 

I use this site sometimes for my university-studies but i'm not quite sure if it isn't showing too much information for your issues.

However, if you need greek words another time...try it  :Wink:

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## moutarde

Looks complicated!  :Very Happy:   But also very powerful - I'll have to take some time soon to figure it out, thanks Adanvo  :Smile:

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## spyrusthevirus

_.but i think the main problem is, that the system shows you the greek words in greek letters_ 

why would that be a problem? :p

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## Adanvo

okay not for the greek people and also not for me because it had to learn ancient greek for university (hard stuff!) but i think normally it looks a bit "cryptic"  :Razz:

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## drkissinger1

> If you need it maybe another time:
> 
> http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...rue&lang=greek
> 
> This site is searching your english words in greek texts and is showing you the passages of ancient texts AND translations into ancient greek...but i think the main problem is, that the system shows you the greek words in greek letters 
> 
> I use this site sometimes for my university-studies but i'm not quite sure if it isn't showing too much information for your issues.
> 
> However, if you need greek words another time...try it


Haha, I was literally about to post this. PERSEUS is definitely God's gift to students of classical studies. The problem for your purposes, however, is that almost all of the tools are designed to help translate Classical Greek to English, not vice versa. You can try searching for dictionary entries in the LSJ or Middle Liddell lexicons, but it won't be nearly as clean as searching for headwords themselves.

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## drkissinger1

> but i think the main problem is, that the system shows you the greek words in greek letters


You can change that when viewing a document or dictionary entry. For example: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...ry%3Dkeleu%2Fw

On the bottom right, change "Greek Display" from Unicode to Latin transliteration. The words will still look strange, as there are symbols used to mark accents and breathings that won't make sense to most, but you'll get an idea of how the word looks.

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