The Desert Fathers of Egypt spoke
Coptic, the latest stage of
ancient Egyptian. The sayings were originally passed on orally in Coptic, but the original written version was
Greek. The
Sayings have been translated in whole or in part several times.
Pelagius and
John the Deacon made the first translations into
Latin.
Martin of Braga also translated some of the
Sayings into Latin, followed by a more extensive translation by
Paschasius of Dumium in approximately 555. That work may contain only one fifth of the original Greek text. In the 17th century, the Dutch
Jesuit Heribert Rosweyde compiled and translated all the available sources on the Desert Fathers and published them in Latin as the
Vitae patrum. Two translations in
Aramaic were made: the
Nestorian monk
Ânân Îshô's translation into
Classical Syriac from the early 7th century, known as the
Paradise of the Fathers; and a
Christian Palestinian Aramaic translation known from dispersed fragments for the early transmission (6th to 7th century AD) as well as a fragmentary version for the later period (ca. 10th to 11th century AD), originating from or still housed at the
Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai There are also
Armenian translations of both the Alphabetical and Systematic collections. Some of the
Sayings are preserved in
Arabic and
Georgian translations.
Helen Waddell translated a selection of elements from the
Vitae patrum into English in the early 20th century. The first complete translation of the alphabetical "apophthegmata" into English is that of
Benedicta Ward (1975). English translations of the alphabetical, systematic, ==Examples==