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.)
This is incredible!
Thanks Siko, Good to have some feedback from an Arabic speaker
[...] to Rob’s new(ish) blog I recently learned that my name in Arabic would be transliterated as ??? [...]
[...] Thanks go to Rob’s transliteration tool. [...]
oooh, funky!
[...] just stumbled upon this nice little tool to translate from/to Arabic and English. Apparently my name spelled in Arabic is: [...]
[...] nøye på det, og prøv uansett! Du finner et greit oversettelses verktøy her. Men husk dette er bokstav for bokstav oversettelse, ikke språklig korrekt! Så et [...]
excellent tool, excellent job
i would suggest (if time permits you) to try and include numbers for letters not included in the latin alphabet or group of letters that will equal foneticaly to the arabic sounds (well where possible)
Hi!
Can someone assist me please! My name is ELJANDRE and i would like to know or see the Arabic writing/spelling of my name. Please help?
thanks nemar, i’ll do a reworking to include some numbers in there
Does this mean that we have to put our names in backwards?
nope, that’s all taken care of for you
Hi, I found this tool useful for our business. Is there any desktop application of this tool? If it is there, do you have free trial version? And what is the licence fee for the software?
Hi Rajesh, glad you are finding it useful. I don’t have a desktop version of this tool. Email me at ( rob_s_smart at hotmail dot com ) with what you are using it for and how often.
Hello — i’ve been looking for a transliteration or transcription tool that will display the Arabic translation of a word or prhase spelled out in English text — i know it must exist because they do it in the media all the time — for some reason i have been unsuccessful in finding something like this — everything i come across shows the Arabic characture only.
Hi Pete,
Same is the situation for me. Even I am looking for arabic to english transliteration tool. I was able to get arabic character mapping into english but I could’t find any transliteration tool which will give high accuracy. Please tell me if you got this tool. We will welcome any type i.e. desktop application or web service.
Thank You.
Rajesh Taware
Hi Rob,
This is a potentially great and Highly needed tool. You are almost there but not quite. I have been using one such tool for Hebrew. When entering words without the vowel marks it works just like yours, but enter a word with vowels marks and bingo one gets a decent transliteration. Given that Arabic works like Hebrew (ie. mostly written with consonants and on occasions with vowel marks) it should be possible for you do achieve the same objective. Here is the address of the Hebrew gadget (Automatic Transliteration utility v 2.0.) http://www.bethimmanuel.org/hebrew/tools/transliterate.shtml
Please let me know when get there I’ll be one of your fans.
Cheers
Michel
Hi I have been looking around for online name transltors from English to Arabic and i stumbled upon yours, I tried to translate my name (alex) and it came up with ????? which translated back to Englsih spells ‘aliks’ is this correct?
Hey Alex, I checked with my fully fluent arabic speaking wife
and she says that is indeed how she would write Alex in arabic
Thanks allot Rob I may get my Arabic name made into gold now.
Thanks Rob for the translation’s, Great tool !!
Freaky
I do not know if you use a database for this, but sometime ago, I built a database linking difference transliterations together and with the Arabic original, so if you search for Mohamed, you can get results for Mohammed, Muhammad, Muhammed, ???? and all other variations.
I then wrote up a simple transliteration standard that uses only the 26 letters on a regular Latin keyboard, with no extra dots, umlauts or signs. The purpose of the standard is not to give an exact sound of the Arabic original (since only Arabic can do this). Rather it aims at helping a non-Arabic speaker with zero knowledge of Arabic to pronounce the name in a way that would help an Arabic speaker identify the name.
If this is a free project (code and data), please get in touch. I would love to put this on the web, so others add to it, and hopefully later on have it used by search engines.
Hi Rob,
Quick question…my arabic is extremely poor so i wonder if you can help! Can a translation from english to Arabic vary in look with the use of different vowels? For instance ‘Emily’ changes to imili, could there also be a amali translation or emelee? I ask as i (supposedly) have an ‘emily’ in arabic necklace but your translation appears to be different.
Kind regards
Hi Emily,
There are only 3 main vowels in Arabic, rather than 5 English vowels:
a (in English) = a (in Arabic) [? or ?]
e, i and y (in English) = i (in Arabic) pronounced ‘ee’ [? or ?]
o, u and w (in English) = oo (in Arabic) [?]
So when Rob’s translator translated your name, it changed anything that sounds like (ee) to an (i).
So it changed the first letter of your name to (i), the i to (i) and the y to (i).
As all words vary in sound in English, it’s difficult to translate those letters to the correct sound in Arabic … that’s where you need human input.
I would write your name in Arabic as ????? …. or some people might write it ?????? … by adding an extra (ee) as the second letter.
For completness of info:
There are also some soft vowels in Arabic that are a lighter version of (a, ee and oo) … but Rob’s translator does not cover these. This shouldn’t affect most translations, it just increases the preciseness of the translation. Hope this makes sense … it’s quite hard to explain it in writing.
Salam Alaikum
thanks alot i reallly love the way arabic writing looks, i been to a iraq 2 times as a american soldiers. people need to see the difference to what u see in tv, i love america and this is the best country in the world. but we all americans are not looking at reality and that is the all muslim and middle easterners are not terrorist. this came in very handy i want a tatoo in arabic writting in rememberence of my father who passed away.
Thanks for the comment Chris, and if you’d like to post your fathers name here then I can double check that its correct before you get the tattoo.
Hi, I found this site a few months ago when I was thinking of getting a tattoo in Arabic. I had printed a few things out for me and a few co-workers when a woman we work with –who is fluent in Arabic– told us that while it was BASICALLY right, it was missing a few things here and there, or she added a few strokes.
I wanted to make sure that these are right before I get my tattoo this weekend. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks.
Erica you haven’t posted what your geting tattoo’d … so I can’t tell you whether they are correct
If you have a friend fluent in arabic though I would definitely check with them before geting a tattoo
I was thinking of either getting my name (ERICA) or the word LOVE tattooed. If you could post it in Arabic so that I could double check with her, I would appreciate it.
Whenever I try to get the Arabic for LOVE, it comes out incomplete.
Thanks.
Hey Erica, your name would be ?????
The word love is pronounced “hub” and written ?? a nicer word is actually habibi which means “my love” and is written ?????
on this site my name is different than when i did it on an other site.
here it’s shorter, on the other site, there are 2 more ‘signs’ on the back:
????????
on this site it’s: ????????
wich one is the right one?
Hi Stefanie I’ve checked with my arabic speaking wife and the other site spells your name as “sfthbshahth” and doesnt make any sense at all. The one
you got from here is almost exactly right but should be one letter shorter and be ???????
I need help desperately! My boyfriend is getting 2 tattoos in arabic for his birthday which is this Thursday and will be getting the tattoos in 3 days. He needs to get 4 words translated to make a decision but with all of the translation generators out there i’m not sure if the translations we have are correct. Can you please tell me if these are correct??
perseverence = ????????
courage = ????????
independence = ?????????
resilience = ??????
Hi Jennifer, Hanan tells me that they are all correct apart from resilience which is correct but should have an extra alif (the vertical stick on the right hand side, just like the other three words do)
Hi,
Can you please confirm that this is correct: Jayden Amari Victor my little prince – (to arabic) – ?????? ????? ?????? ?? ?????? ?????? – It’s very important that this is perfect as I am getting this as a tattoo very soon!
Your help would be much appreciated.
Hi Natalie, this is a transliterator not a translator. it simply changes the english letters to arabic letters.
please read my previous post for an explanation of the difference between translation and transliteration
http://robsmart.co.uk/2007/02/01/arabic-transliteration/
don’t get that tattoo’d as it will not make sense to an Arabic speaker, it is simply the sentence you have written but in arabic characters.
17/11/06
hello!
my name is Špela which would be pronounced SHPELA. the end of the name and the letter e as well is pronounced as the name Ella. it’s important that you know what the e is not pronounced as ee!!!its a tipycal slovenian name and it is hard to explain the pronounciation.
thanks
Hey Rob,
I lived in the Middle East for 7 years and find arabic text really sentimental, so I would like to get the name of my brother tattooed on my arm in arabic. I typed his name (Phillip) into the translator and it came out as ??????? – and when translated back to english it came out as Phillip, which was correct, but I wanted to make double sure that it was 100% right before I got it tattooed onto my body. Haha.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Hi Laura,
I’m Rob’s wife, replying on Rob’s behalf.
)
It looks like the transliterater does not know to change the sound of ‘PH’ to ‘F’.
Also, in Arabic there is no need for the double L.
Rob is updating it now
Here’s what (phillip) should be in Arabic = ?????
Good luck :O)
I used this tool to figure out english sayings in Arabic.. but when i put arabic words in english it doesn’t translate??
I want to figure out how to say in arabic.. (What i fear I create)
Thanks
Hi Cat, this is a transliteration tool (changes english alphabet to arabic alphabet and vice versa) you need a translation tool instead. have a go on googles arabic translation here
Thanks Rob, you are a great help!
is this trustfull? because i wan’t an arabic tattoo and i wanna know for shure that the translation is right..
thanks
Hi Demi, please read the response to Cat above your comment.
What is really needed is when English is transliterated to Arabic it should also show the same Arabic answer but spelled in Roman letters like; Love=Hub, very=kulish and friend=sadik, thank you=shukran, etc…and not just have Arabic script.
Are there any transliterator programs out there that will do this? I am not so much wanting to read Arabic script as i am wanting to pronounce the equivelent spoken word.
Can you help me find what i need?
Regards
Robert
hi Robert, if you used google translate on an english phrase to get the arabic then pasted it in here and transliterated it, you would get the same effect.
I’m not quite up to writing my own translation engine at the moment I’ll leave that to IBM Research and Google
i wana learn arabic as i am going 2 bahrein 4 da 1st time, but i dnt know how 2 read arabic, al this online language converters are giving text out put in arabic, what do i do now