Transliteration again … now complete
Rob Smart | February 2, 2007I’ve spent a bit more time on my arabic to english transliteration, it now does English to Arabic as well. So put your name into the text area below hit the “To Arabic” button and see what your name looks like in Arabic characters. Also have a go at pasting some Arabic text in to find out how those characters are pronounced (well…roughly pronounced 
) you have to be a bit creative and imagine that there are a few more vowels between the letters when doing the Arabic to English (see my lower transliteration post below for an explanation why).
(Please do not do anything permanent with the output of this, it is meant as an experiment. There will be errors in the output so don’t get a tattoo with anything that comes out of it.)
There is a very robust and professional web-based Arabic transliteration text pad. Check it out, you will find it very useful
http://www.eiktub.com
This is also used to search google for Arabic content
http://search.eiktub.com
stumbled upon this website.
in malaysia, this form of arabic characters being used is called ‘jawi’
it’s literally a direct translation of letters into arabic characters.
just my 2 cents worth.
Laura, the direct translation of phillip sounds more like bihillib and in my opinion, that’s not the closest u can get in spelling using arabic characters
i wld suggest characters ‘fa, ya, lam, ya, pa’
hi Zharif, yes you are correct. The correct term for spelling an english word using arabic letters is transliteration, not translation which has caused some confusion throughout the comments in this post
Hi Guys..
Could someone please translate the following as i dont want them to be tattooed and not be right..
Holly
Felicity
Thank you!!!
Hi
I want to have my name as a tattoo. Could you please transliterate my name beverley into arabic please. I have been trying to get the correct transliteration for ages now. The sites I have visited all give different transliteration which has left me very confused.
Thank you
Yes this is good but i reallly want to know what names mean in arabic so if you have a website can you give it to me please??
thanks
idrees
Hi my little boy is 2 months old and his name is Jayden Alexander Cassani. I would really appriciate if anyone could assist me with translating his name into arabis since i want to get a tatto of his name. Thankyou
really do like this doing a tattoo on my arm for “aimee” and it looks really good could u confirm it is right? obviously tattoos are for life
Hi there,
I am considering having my wifes name tattooed on my wrist. Have been to a few translation sites and all seem to be slightly different. Could you confirm the correct translation please.
Her name Sallie-anne.
Regards
Hello! I want to know how to write:
“Through God and family, all things are possible”
Can someone help me?
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!
Hi Rob,
How is my name spelled in Arabic:
my name Eljandré
Thanks!
Hi Rob, wondering if you have added numbering to the transliteration tool yet? Either way thankyou very much for your work! it’s utterly invaluable and such a relief that someone’s taken the initiative to create such a great tool. But the numbering is very important and I eagerly anticipate any update! Thanks
Hi I am looking for the name VIVAAN in Arabic script. I tried your tool and got ?????? as a result. Is this correct? Please let me know soon. Thanks. I think your transliteration tool has helped a lot of ppl.
Can you transliterate my last name “Gramesty” into Arabic for me? It is for a tattoo so, I would like you to confirm. thanks.
Hi Rob
once upon a time a dear friend told me to memorise a particular phrase which sounds a bit to me like the arabic language. She said it was to be said under ones breath if someone was having an argument, as it would calm the atmosphere (yes a bit new age I know!)
It sounds like this:
Leykat leykat lem lem leykat fijee deyhaa goovrool dey yat
Clearly this is some kind of transliteration. I have always wondered if it was Arabic. Can your tool take a transliteration and work backwards ? If it was an Arabic saying maybe your wife might recognise the words .
Hope you can help
best wishes Annie
Hi Annie,
I’ve checked with Hanan and none of the words in the phrase are recognisable at all to her as Arabic. Do you know any more detail about your friends background ?
This is excellent! I’ve been scouring the internet up and down for something like this, and yours appears to be the only one that converts from Arabic text to English! Thank you so very much for this service!
Sorry, Rob; it’s misleading. Give it another try with the help of an Arab linguist and make use of other available standards which also require improvement.
Prof Dinha, would you care to elaborate ?
I don’t pretend it’s perfect, this was an evening piece of coding not part of a doctoral thesis and I unfortunately don’t have an Arab linguist hanging around to pull in for fixes
My previous remark should in no way discourage you. Rather, go on and improve the program. As an example of a better transliteration system, still under development, would be the following:
http://www.kalmasoft.com/maps.htm#retrieve
By the way, the person who is still developing the system is not a linguist, either, but a Sudanese who owns a B.Sc in IT.
Prof Dinha,
In terms of standards the only widely used method on the internet isn’t actually a standard at all in any official sense, but has been widely adopted by Arabic speakers all over the world who do not have access to an Arabic keyboard and that is that Arabic chat alphabet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet
The example you give above is of a commercial offering which indeed looks very complete and a useful tool for a business specializing in this area, but is obviously in a different league in the time dedicated to developing it and isn’t something that would be used by a broad audience for everyday use.
I instead prefer the systems offered free for use from yamli (http://www.yamli.com/) and eiktub (http://www.eiktub.com/) and more recently google (http://www.google.co.in/transliterate/arabic/). These services all offer ways for people to integrate the service into their own websites providing a valuable contribution to internet society.
Someone sent me a message typed in on a yamli system – and none of the normal translation sites I have used in the past would work to translate that back to English. Yours at least gave me a phonetic version to work with – thank you thank you!
man plz emaili youssef2275@hot…. plz contact me i need help about your project
Thank you Siko. This was very helpful.
Can somebody help me translate Arabic Chat conversation to either regular Arabic or English or French? My husband is using this and cheating on me and I need to know what it is that he said on line please? Thank you.
It would be nice to have this tool as Python or Perl tool.
Hi Rob
I am just about to start trials of my new shopping centre product, and have been asked to have the text files formatted in Arabic, is this some thing you could help with.
Hi Wayne, sorry but I don’t provide any professional translation services.
Can you help me translate my sons name jaiden into arabic letters. I need it for a tattoo.
Do not worry you can be sure that I will not run out and get a tattoo. When translating words to different languages there is always something that is lost in translation. Sofia Copola was right when she made that movie.
Thanks for sharing,
Patricia
Helpful info. Fortunate me I discovered your web site unintentionally, and I’m surprised why this coincidence did not came about earlier! I bookmarked it.