Latin to English translation 

Blitz Latin is a stunningly fast Latin translation program. It translates Latin text into English, but not English into Latin. Licence holders receive a medieval dictionary which adds a further 4,000+ words to the dictionary. The program has now been tested with 4,000+ Latin files, from classical to medieval to modern. All words that occur more than four times in these 4,000 files will be recognised (unless they are proper names, foreign words or abbreviations).  

The electronic dictionary comprises well over 40,000 Latin words as they would be counted in a paper dictionary. The addition of inflections to each word increases the total of discrete Latin words to perhaps 500,000. It covers all eras from antiquity to modern times. Blitz Latin is flexible. It is also sufficiently intelligent to recognise the fields in which it is working (biological/medical, ecclesiastical, grammatical, legal, miltary, NeoLatin, scientific/technical, theatre/music/poetry) and provide appropriate translations.  

Computer translation of Latin requires an approach that is significantly different from the methods that succeed with modern European languages. If you want a detailed PDF format article on the strategies used by Blitz Latin to produce a computer translation click on the highlighted text.

Versions from 1.33 upwards have been tested without failure on multiple scans of nearly 1,000 Latin texts downloaded from a prime respository for Latin files in HTML format of uncertain accuracy - The Latin Library. The files contain all the works of such well known Latin authors as St. Augustine, Caesar, Cicero, Livy, Ovid and Vergil, as well as numerous other files, including fragmentary texts by less well known authors. Thus the file set can be regarded as representative of classical Latin, and contains nearly five million Latin words in all. Another half-million words from 180 medieval and modern Latin texts at the <www.thelatinlibrary.com> site were also tested.