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Instant, free AI translation into Lemko for Poland and Slovakia, in Cyrillic and Latin letters, built on real Lemko language data.
Lemko
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As featured
…thanks to Petro Orynycz’s Lemko translator […] I learned that [Meg Ryan’s great-great-grandfather] was killed in a mine.
“забытый въ майнѣ”, killed in mine: Nicolaus Durniak’s cause of death in the Greek Catholic register, Old Forge, Pennsylvania, 1893 (Ancestry, via Megan Smolenyak)
Recent innovations, such as integrating neural translation engines with rule-based systems, have yielded encouraging results in enhancing translation accuracy for endangered languages, including those of Lemko.
It was an honor to welcome Petro Orynycz, an AI engineer and linguist working on the Google Translate project, for a compelling guest lecture on low-resource languages and natural language processing at IISLab, Technical University of Košice.
Cover photo: guest lecture at IISLab, Technical University of Košice, April 2026 · IISLab
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Thomas“This a great labor of love for us proud Lemko. My baba and dido would be so proud!”
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Stephan“This translation is amazing. Thank you for making this available and digitally preserving the language in an interactive, utilitarian way.”
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Anonymous“Used this for a roleplay Discord server that takes place in Transcarpathia. Helped with the immersion 10/10! Thank you! Дякую!”
Please cite Orynycz, P. (2023). BLEU Skies for Endangered Language Revitalization: Lemko Rusyn and Ukrainian Neural AI Translation Accuracy Soars. In: Degen, H., Ntoa, S. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in HCI. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14051. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35894-4_10
About the language
The Lemko language: what you should know
Lemko is a living language of the Carpathians, and for many families in North America it is the language of grandparents who came from the Low Beskids. The Lemkos, who also call themselves Rusnaks,8 have lived between the Poprad and the Osława rivers since at least the Middle Ages, and on the southern side of the mountains in what is now Slovakia.5, 8
Two destinations. Choose Poland to write the Lemko of Poland, in the norm codified by Henryk Fontański and Mirosława Chomiak’s 2000 grammar: the form read by Lemkos in the Beskids and in the communities of western Poland.6, 5 Choose Slovakia to write Prešov Rusyn, the literary standard codified in Slovakia in 1995.18, 20 The two sound different: the Lemko of Poland stresses the next-to-last syllable, as Polish does, while the Prešov standard was based on central dialects of the Zemplín area and has free, mobile stress.6, 20, 19 The Slovakia option follows that standard; it does not reproduce every local Lemko-type dialect. If the person you are writing to lives in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia or in Vojvodina, the Rusyn Translator offers those varieties too.
Cyrillic or Latin? Lemko is normally written in Cyrillic, and every result comes in Cyrillic with a Latin line underneath. Pick the Latin spelling your reader will find natural: Polish- or Slovak-style, Czech- or Hungarian-style, an English-style spelling for relatives who never learned Cyrillic, or a scientific transliteration.
Where to hear it. LEM.fm, the radio station of Ruska Bursa in Gorlice, has broadcast in Lemko since 2011 and streams online wherever you are,22, 10 and every July the Lemko Vatra brings Lemkos from all over the world to Zdynia in the Low Beskids.25
So translate from English into Lemko, speak Lemko, and meet other speakers in person!
More about Lemko: history, culture and famous Lemkos
The name. “Lemko” is usually traced to the little word lem, “only”.8, 9, 13 In 1829 Johann Csaplovics wrote that the Ruthenians of Hungary were divided by dialect into Lissaks, Lemáks and others;1 scholars took the name up in the mid-nineteenth century, the Lemkos themselves only began to accept it towards the century’s end, and in the Prešov region it never caught on widely.8
What it sounds like. In the Lemko of Poland and in the western, Lemko-type dialects of north-eastern Slovakia the stress is fixed on the next-to-last syllable, as in Polish;6, 21, 20 east of the Osława in Poland and of the Laborec in Slovakia begin dialects with mobile stress.21, 24 Lemko has also kept the old vowel ы, which standard Ukrainian lacks: хыжа is a house, жытя is life.6, 19 The Lemko dialects of Poland share much with those of north-eastern Slovakia, but they are no less close to the neighbouring San, Boiko and Hutsul dialects, notes the Vienna Slavist Michael Moser, and long contact with Polish has given them distinctive features of their own.11
A language with its own history. Helena Duć-Fajfer of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow describes a Lemko literary life with more than a century behind it.5 The periodical Lemko (1911–1914), written in the speech of the western Lemkos, was important for the development of the modern written norm; its opening editorial explained that Lemko speech differs markedly from that of other parts of Rus’.5 In the 1930s Lemko was taught in some schools using Metodyj Trochanowski’s textbooks,5, 11 and Fontański and Chomiak’s Grammar of the Lemko Language (2000) was a major milestone in its codification.6, 5 Poland recognises Lemko as an ethnic-minority language under the 2005 Act on national and ethnic minorities.23, 5 Lemko returned to the classroom in 1991; in 2023/24 it was taught in two pre-schools, 23 primary schools and several secondary schools,4 pupils have been able to sit their school-leaving exam in it since 2013,5 and in August 2026 it was entered in Poland’s National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.3 Even so, Duć-Fajfer counts it among the endangered languages.5
Deportation and dispersal. In 1944–1946 about two-thirds of the Lemkos were resettled to Soviet Ukraine; in 1947, in Operation Vistula, the rest, some tens of thousands, were scattered across the former German lands of western and northern Poland.11, 5, 4 Fewer than one in ten came back after 1956,4 and Poland’s Senate condemned the operation in 1990.10 That is why three Lemkos in four in Poland now live far from the Beskids, around Legnica, Wrocław and Zielona Góra.4
Lemkos in America. The Encyclopedia of Ukraine dates the start of Lemko emigration from the Prešov region to the 1870s and, in its own classification, counts Lemkos as most of the immigrants it calls Ukrainian until the end of the century.8, 9 The names on the records varied: Moser points out that the same emigrants ended up labelled Ukrainian, Carpatho-Ruthenian or Russian, now and then Hungarian, Slovak or Polish12 (worth remembering when you search old parish records for your family). Between the wars the Russophile Lemko Association appeared with its paper Karpatska Rus’, and in 1936 the Ukrainian-minded Organization for the Defense of Lemkivshchyna;8, 9 the World Federation of Lemkos dates from 1973, when it was set up in Yonkers, New York.9 The Rusyn side of that story, from the Ruthenian National Association of 1894 to the diaspora’s role after 1989, is told on the Rusyn Translator page.
How many, and where. The Encyclopedia of Ukraine (1993) put Americans and Canadians of Lemko origin at 100,000 to 150,000, most of them in Pennsylvania and around Cleveland.8 A census measures something narrower, a declared identity: in Poland’s 2021 census 13,607 people declared themselves Lemkos.4 Moser explains why such counts come out low where one group is split between a Rusyn and a Ukrainian minority.11
Andy Warhol and other famous Lemkos. Andy Warhol’s parents, Andrej and Julia, left the Lemko village of Miková (Stropkov district, Slovakia) for Pittsburgh;17, 9 the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art in nearby Medzilaborce reopened in September 2026 after a three-year renovation costing almost €16 million.15 Lemko roots also belong to the naïve painter Nikifor of Krynica, the poet Bohdan Ihor Antonych and the geographer and encyclopaedist Volodymyr Kubijovyč.9, 8
Lemko culture today. The Lemko Vatra began in 1983 and has been held in Zdynia since 1990;25 the oldest Lemko organisation, Ruska Bursa in Gorlice, founded in 1908, runs LEM.fm, the first Lemko radio station;22, 10 and nine villages carry bilingual Polish–Lemko name signs: Bielanka near Gorlice was the first, in 2009, after a vote carried by a single ballot,7, 2 and eight villages of the Uście Gorlickie commune followed in 2012.16, 5 The wooden church of St James the Less in Powroźnik, dating from 1600, has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2013.14
Across the mountains. In the Prešov region of Slovakia the Lemkos more often call themselves Rusnaks or Rusyns.8, 9 Three things there are worth keeping apart. Ethnographers and some grammarians speak of “southern Lemkos” in a broad sense: Fontański and Chomiak credit the Slovak codification to them.6 The western dialects around Bardejov and Svidník are of the Lemko type, as Juraj Vaňko, a native of the Lemko village of Mlynárovce, shows in The Language of Slovakia’s Rusyns (2000).24 And the Prešov literary standard, codified on 27 January 1995, chose a different basis, the speech of a small area between the West and East Zemplín dialects.18, 20, 19 Stefan Pugh’s The Rusyn Language (2009) is a grammar of that standard in English, with constant comparison to Lemko.20 In Svidník the Museum of Ukrainian Culture and the festival of Rusyn-Ukrainian culture await you.9
One norm or several? Lemko writers and scholars take part in the Rusyn language congresses held since 1992.5 Writing in 2016, Moser described the 2000 grammar as the declaration of a Polish standard, one of four Rusyn standards then taking shape along state borders;11 Duć-Fajfer describes Lemko writing as a literary system of its own.5 For a translation the practical question is simpler: choose the form the person you are writing to actually reads.
Sources
- CSAPLOVICS, Johann v. Gemälde von Ungern. Erster Theil. Pesth: C. A. Hartleben, 1829, p. 205. Available at: archive.org
- DAŃKO, Ireneusz. Łemkowskie strachy na Lachy. Gazeta.pl, 28 February 2008. Archived copy: web.archive.org (p. 1), web.archive.org (p. 2)
- Departament Wyznań Religijnych oraz Mniejszości Narodowych i Etnicznych MSWiA. Język łemkowski wpisany na Krajową Listę Niematerialnego Dziedzictwa Kulturowego [The Lemko language entered in the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage]. Gov.pl, 19 August 2026. Available at: gov.pl
- DOLIŃSKA, Joanna – DUĆ-FAJFER, Olena. The Lemko-Rusyn language in education in Poland. Ljouwert/Leeuwarden: Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, 2025 (Regional Dossier series), pp. 2–4. Available at: mercator-research.eu
- DUĆ-FAJFER, Helena. Historia i sytuacja języka łemkowskiego w ostatnim stuleciu [The history and situation of the Lemko language in the past century]. Poradnik Językowy, 2021, no. 7, pp. 46–66 (pp. 46–48, 54, 56–60). DOI: 10.33896/PorJ.2021.7.3
- FONTAŃSKI, Henryk – CHOMIAK, Mirosława. Gramatyka języka łemkowskiego [Grammar of the Lemko language]. Katowice: Śląsk, 2000, pp. 12, 18–19, 34. ISBN 83-7164-178-8.
- KERTYCZAK, Anna (ed.). Bielanka / Білянка – studium przypadku. Lesson 7, FED training materials, 2013. Available at: fed.org.pl
- KUBIJOVYČ, Volodymyr. Lemkos; Lemko region. In: STRUK, Danylo Husar (ed.). Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993; online edition: Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine [cited 2026-11-05]. Available at: encyclopediaofukraine.com (Lemkos), encyclopediaofukraine.com (Lemko region)
- ЛЮБЧИК, І. Д. [LIUBCHYK, Ihor]. Лемки [Lemkos]. In: Енциклопедія сучасної України [Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine], vol. 17. Kyiv: Institute of Encyclopaedic Research, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2016. Available at: esu.com.ua
- Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych i Administracji. Łemkowie [Lemkos]. Gov.pl. Available at: gov.pl
- MOSER, Michael. Rusyn: A New–Old Language In-between Nations and States. In: KAMUSELLA, Tomasz – NOMACHI, Motoki – GIBSON, Catherine (eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 125, 127–128, 131–133.
- MOSER, Michael. New Contributions to the History of the Ukrainian Language. Edmonton–Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2016 (Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research Monograph Series, 7), pp. 411–412. ISBN 978-1-894865-44-9.
- MUŠINKA, Mykola. Lemkovia. In: Elektronická encyklopédia tradičnej ľudovej kultúry Slovenska [online]. Bratislava: Centrum pre tradičnú ľudovú kultúru, [2010] [cited 2026-11-05]. Available at: ludovakultura.sk
- Miasto i Gmina Uzdrowiskowa Muszyna. Zabytek UNESCO [UNESCO monument: the church of St James the Less in Powroźnik]. Muszyna.pl [cited 2026-11-06]. Available at: muszyna.pl
- NOVINY.SK. V Medzilaborciach otvorili múzeum Andyho Warhola. Prišiel aj prezident Pellegrini [The Andy Warhol museum opened in Medzilaborce; President Pellegrini attended]. Noviny.sk, 3 September 2026. Available at: noviny.sk
- OCHREMIAK, Anna. Beskid Niski. Łemkowskie nazwy na tablicach [Lemko names on the signs]. Otwarty Przewodnik Krajoznawczy, 12 October 2012. Available at: krajoznawcy.info.pl
- OTRIOVÁ, Jana. The incredible story of the mother of Andy Warhol, the King of Pop Art. Rusyn.sk, 8 November 2022. Available at: rusyn.sk
- ПЛЇШКОВА, Анна [PLIŠKOVÁ, Anna]. Русиньскый язык на Словеньску (Короткый нарис історії і сучасности) [The Rusyn language in Slovakia: a short outline of its history and present]. Prešov: Світовый конґрес Русинів, 2008, p. 9. ISBN 978-80-88769-86-6.
- ПЛЇШКОВА, Анна – КОПОРОВА, Кветослава et al. [PLIŠKOVÁ, Anna – KOPOROVÁ, Kvetoslava et al.]. Правила русиньской высловности з ортоепічным словником [Rules of Rusyn pronunciation with an orthoepic dictionary]. Prešov: Пряшівска універзіта, 2021, p. 15. ISBN 978-80-555-2682-9.
- PUGH, Stefan M. The Rusyn Language: A Grammar of the Literary Standard of Slovakia with Reference to Lemko and Subcarpathian Rusyn. München: Lincom Europa, 2009 (Languages of the World/Materials, 476), pp. 7, 28. ISBN 978-3-89586-940-2.
- STIEBER, Zdzisław. Dialekt Łemków. Fonetyka i fonologia [The dialect of the Lemkos: phonetics and phonology]. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1982 (Prace Językoznawcze PAN, 97), pp. 6–7, 14. Available at: rcin.org.pl
- Stowarzyszenie „Ruska Bursa” w Gorlicach. Ruska Bursa. Available at: lem.fm
- Ustawa z dnia 6 stycznia 2005 r. o mniejszościach narodowych i etnicznych oraz o języku regionalnym [Act of 6 January 2005 on national and ethnic minorities and on the regional language]. Dz.U. 2005 nr 17 poz. 141, art. 2 ust. 4. Available at: isap.sejm.gov.pl
- VAŇKO, Juraj. The Language of Slovakia’s Rusyns. New York: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, 2000 (East European Monographs, 539; Classics of Carpatho-Rusyn Scholarship, 11), pp. ix, 41, 67. ISBN 0-88033-437-1.
- Zjednoczenie Łemków. Historia łemkowskiej Watry [History of the Lemko Vatra]. Watra w Zdyni [cited 2026-11-06]. Available at: watrazdynia.pl
Community
Get involved
Community Calendar
| Date | Time | Event | Place | City | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 November 2026 | 15:00–22:00 | “Makovica String” folk-song contest (Makovická struna) | — | Bardejov | Slovakia |
| 5 December 2026 | 11:00 | Holiday Hostina: potluck with a presentation by Alexandra Bodnarchuck of Doma Dance Theater | St Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral Parish Center, 1701 5th St NE | Minneapolis, MN | USA |
| 30 January 2027 | 19:00–03:00 | Rusyn Ball (Rusínský ples) | Vivant Hall, Gregorova 2298/8 | Prague | Czechia |
| early February 2027 expected | — | Duchnovych Day | — | Minneapolis–Saint Paul, MN | USA |
| May 2027 expected | — | Lemko fête “LEM after Easter” (Лемківські фестини «ЛЕМ по ВЕЛИКОДНЮ») | Музей просто неба «Шевченківський гай» | Lviv | Ukraine |
| late May 2027 expected | — | Alexander Duchnovič Festival of Drama and Recitation (Festival drámy a umeleckého slova Alexandra Duchnoviča) | — | Prešov | Slovakia |
| late May 2027 expected | — | Rusyn Festival (Rusínsky festival) | — | Svidník | Slovakia |
| late May 2027 expected | — | May celebration (Majáles) | Slovenský dům | Prague | Czechia |
| May–June 2027 expected | — | Festival of Rusyn Folklore in Slovakia (Festival folklóru Rusínov Slovenska) | Amfiteáter Dubne | Kamienka | Slovakia |
| June 2027 expected | — | International Summer School of Rusyn Language and Culture (Studium Carpatho-Ruthenorum; Medzinárodná letná škola rusínskeho jazyka a kultúry) | Prešovská univerzita | Prešov | Slovakia |
| mid June 2027 expected | — | Festival of Rusyn-Ukrainian Culture in Slovakia (Slávnosti kultúry Rusínov-Ukrajincov Slovenska) | — | Svidník | Slovakia |
| late June 2027 expected | — | Festival of Culture and Sport (Festival kultúry a športu) | — | Medzilaborce | Slovakia |
| late June 2027 expected | — | “Red Rose” Rusyn culture festival (Фестивал руснацкей култури „Червена ружа“) | — | Ruski Krstur | Serbia |
| early July 2027 expected | — | Lemko Vatra | Oselia CYM | Ellenville, NY | USA |
| mid July 2027 expected | — | Lemko Vatra (Łemkowska Watra) | — | Zdynia | Poland |
| early August 2027 expected | — | Rusyn Food Festival | — | Ambridge, PA | USA |
| early August 2027 expected | — | Lemko Vatra in Exile (Łemkowska Watra na Obczyźnie) | — | Michałów | Poland |
| mid August 2027 expected | — | Lemko culture festival “Bells of the Lemko Region” (Фестиваль лемківської культури «Дзвони Лемківщини») | Урочище «Бичова», музейний комплекс «Лемківське село» | Monastyryska | Ukraine |
| August–September 2027 expected | — | Vatra Diaspora | — | Queens, New York City | USA |
| late August 2027 expected | — | Children’s Lemko Vatra (Дитяча лемківська ватра) | — | Vorocheve | Ukraine |
| early October 2027 expected | — | Festival of Sacred Song (Festival duchovnej piesne) | — | Snina | Slovakia |
| ? | — | All-Ukrainian Congress of Lemkos (Всеукраїнський конгрес лемків) | — | — | Ukraine |
Expected: estimated from past years, not yet announced. Check with the organiser before you travel.
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Community comments (15)
Read all comments →-
Would you also be adding an audio pronunciation for the results?
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When will you make a Rusyn translator? I would love to see that.
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Just a question, what is the difference between Lemko and Rusyn?
All comments and the reply form
15 responses to “Lemko Translator | LemkoTran”
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This is great labor of love for us proud Lemko. My baba and dido would be so proud!!
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Many thanks, Thomas! Much appreciated.
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When will you make a Rusyn translator? I would love to see that.
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Thanks for your interest in the project, Aleksandar. Work on the translator for Rusyn as codified in Slovakia will start as soon as the Lemko translator achieves a near-human or superhuman bilingual evaluation understudy (BLEU) score. Hopefully soon!
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Oh wow… fast response! And I can’t wait for it to release! Good luck.
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Fast response because you caught me while I was checking my email 🙂 Thank you for your support, Aleksandar!
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Just a question, what is the difference between Lemko and Rusyn?
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Geography, dialect + accent. Lemko as a subset of RUSYN.
Take the above as opinion. 🙂-
The above is not opinion. It is correct.
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Lemko is very close to Polish. Was Lemko Polonized?
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Perhaps Polish is close to Lemko-Rusyn. (Another PoV)
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Used this for a RP Discord server that takes place in Transcarpathia. Helped with the immersion 10/10! Thank you!
Дякую!
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This translation is amazing. Thank you for making this available and digitally preserving the language in an interactive, utilitarian way.
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Would you also be adding an audio pronunciation for the results?
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Hey Christina, absolutely I want you to be able to click a button and hear the audio pronunciation. Thanks for the request!
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