Polish handwriting to text for old letters and family records
Polish handwriting carries nine letters that English keyboards do not have, and old records from Polish lands are not always in Polish. Upload a photo and get the text typed out as written; the first page is free, the whole document is $5.
The letters that go missing
Polish uses ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź and ż. In handwriting the marks are small, and a reader that is not expecting Polish drops them, turning "łaska" into "laska", which is a different word. Surnames and village names suffer most. Choosing Polish before you upload tells the reader to look for these marks and keep them.
When a Polish record is not in Polish
Until 1918 Polish lands were divided between three empires, and the language of official records followed the border. In the Russian partition, civil records were kept in Russian, in Cyrillic, from 1868. In the Prussian partition they were in German, often in Kurrent script. Catholic parish registers, especially in the Austrian partition, were commonly kept in Latin.
So a record about a Polish family may need Russian, German or Latin selected instead. If you are not sure, leave the language on automatic detection and check the language the tool reports on the first page, which is free.
What families usually bring
- Letters from relatives who stayed in Poland
- Birth, marriage and death records from parish and civil registers
- Passports, visas and ship documents
- Wartime correspondence and camp letters
- Prayer book inscriptions and family notes
Everything about how the tool works, what it costs and how your documents are handled is on the handwriting to text page.
Questions and answers
Does it keep Polish letters like ł and ż?
Yes. With Polish selected, the text is typed out with the full Polish alphabet, exactly as written on the page.
My record is from the Russian partition. Can it read Cyrillic?
Yes. Select Russian for records kept in Russian. Names are copied in Cyrillic as written; the tool does not transliterate them.
Does it translate into English?
No. You get the original text typed out, which you can then translate with any translation tool.