Arabic ↔ Latin converter

Arabic to Latin: Arabizi or scholarly transliteration

The converter offers two ways to write Arabic in Latin letters, depending on who will read the result.

Arabizi follows the habits of texting and social media, especially in North Africa: digits for sounds English lacks, and no accents. For example, “مرحبا” becomes “mr7ba”. Pick it for a quick message anyone can read on a phone.

Scholarly transliteration follows the German DIN 31635 standard, using ṯ, ǧ, ḥ, ḫ, ḏ, š, ṣ, ḍ, ṭ, ẓ, ʿ, ġ and q. Long vowels ā, ī and ū appear when the harakat show them, and the article becomes “al-”. It suits a thesis, a bibliography or a catalogue entry.

Why the result may lack vowels

Arabic is normally written with consonants and long vowels only, and the short vowels are left out. The converter never invents them: “قمر” (moon) gives “9mr” in Arabizi and “qmr” in scholarly mode. Once the harakat are added, “قَمَر” becomes “9amar” or “qamar”.

To get a complete transcription, add the vowel marks first with the harakat panel of the online Arabic keyboard, then convert. Without them, read the output as a skeleton that you complete by hand.

Latin to Arabic: word by word or letter by letter

The Word by word method recognises whole words. It combines spelling rules with a dictionary of frequent Arabic and Darija words, including regional variants: “salam” gives سلام, “habibi” gives حبيبي and “inshallah” gives إن شاء الله. For a word it does not know, it proposes the most likely spelling, which you may need to fix.

The Letter by letter method swaps each sign without interpretation: “sh” or “ch” give ش, “3” gives ع and “kh” gives خ. Because every “a” becomes ا, “salam” turns into سالام here. Use it when you already know the exact Arabic spelling.

Would you rather choose between several spellings as you type? The phonetic Arabic keyboard has a word mode with clickable suggestions.