Romanize Text (Transliterate to Latin)

About the Romanize Text (Transliterate to Latin)

Paste text in Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian or another Cyrillic language, Greek, Japanese kana or Korean Hangul and get it in Latin letters, using the system you need: BGN/PCGN (the British and US government standard for place names), the national systems of Ukraine and Bulgaria, ISO 9 (one Latin letter for every Cyrillic letter), the ICAO passport table, ELOT 743 and ISO 843 for Greek, Hepburn (with or without macrons, or the Japanese passport rules) and the Revised Romanization of Korean.

The systems are more than letter tables, and their rules are applied: Ukrainian Юрій → Yurii but Корюківка → Koriukivka, Greek Ναύπλιο → Náfplio, Japanese しんおおくぼ → Shin'ōkubo, Korean 종로 → Jongno and 신라 → Silla. The tool also turns romaji back into hiragana or katakana. Kanji and hanja are not converted, because their reading depends on the word; they are listed so you can look them up.

Common uses

• Writing a Russian, Ukrainian or Bulgarian name the way your visa form, bank or ticket expects.
• Checking how a name appears in a passport’s machine-readable zone (ICAO, or the Japanese passport rules).
• Romanizing place names for maps, travel guides and address labels with the BGN/PCGN or national standard.
• Transliterating Greek, Russian or Korean titles for bibliographies and academic papers.
• Learning Japanese: turning kana into Hepburn romaji, or romaji into hiragana or katakana.

Cyrillic: which system to choose

• BGN/PCGN 1947 (Russian) writes ж zh, х kh, щ shch, ю yu, я ya, е and ё as ye and yë at the start of a word and after vowels, ъ as ” and ь as ’. Its optional middle dot separates unusual sequences (тс t·s). Source: PCGN, Romanization of Russian.
• Ukrainian national system — Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 55, adopted by BGN/PCGN in 2019 and the UN in 2012. The table and its examples are at zakon.rada.gov.ua.
• Bulgarian Streamlined System — the 2009 Transliteration Act, adopted by BGN/PCGN in 2013 and the UN in 2012: щ sht, ъ a, a final -ия -ia, and България written Bulgaria.
• ISO 9:1995 (also GOST 7.79 System A) gives each Cyrillic letter exactly one Latin letter with diacritics (ж ž, щ ŝ, я â, ъ ʺ, ь ʹ), so the original can be restored. It covers Belarusian, Serbian, Macedonian and older letters too.
• ICAO Doc 9303 Part 3, table B (8th edition, 2021) is the transliteration recommended for the machine-readable zone of passports: ё e, й i, ъ ie, ю iu, я ia, ь left out, with notes for Ukrainian (г h, и y) and Bulgarian (щ sht). Each country decides what its own passports print.

The UN reports on romanization systems compare these systems for each language.

Greek: ELOT 743 and ISO 843

ELOT 743, approved by the UN in 1987 and by BGN/PCGN in 1996, is a transcription: αυ ευ ηυ become av ev iv before voiced sounds and af ef if before voiceless ones or at the end of a word (Λευκάδα → Lefkáda); γγ is ng, γξ nx, γχ nch; μπ is b at the start or end of a word and mp inside it (Μπέχρος → Béchros, Τέμπη → Témpi); η, ι and υ are i, i and y. Stress is shown with an acute accent, moved to the vowel before υ in αύ, εύ and ηύ (Αύρα → Ávra), and the diaeresis is kept. ISO 843 transliterates letter by letter — η ī, ω ō, γγ gg, μπ mp, αυ au — so it can be reversed. The Greek question mark ; becomes ?. Sources: PCGN, Romanization of Greek (2017), and the UNGEGN report on Greek (2016).

Japanese: Hepburn and passports

Modified Hepburn follows the BGN/PCGN agreement and the 2007 guidelines of the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan: long a, u, e and o (and ou) take a macron (Tōkyō), but ii stays ii (Niigata); ん is n everywhere, with an apostrophe before a vowel or y (Shin'ōkubo, Nan'yō); a small っ doubles the next consonant, and before ch it is t (Hatchōbori). Passport follows the Ministry of Foreign Affairs table: long o and u are not written (KOTA, YUKO), ー is left out, ん before B, M and P is M (NAMBA, HOMMA), and sounds borrowed from other languages are written kana by kana (ティ TEI, ファ FUA, ヴァ BA). Without macrons writes every kana (toukyou). は and へ standing alone between spaces are written as the particles wa and e.

Korean: Revised Romanization

The Revised Romanization of Korean (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2000), used in South Korea and adopted by BGN/PCGN in 2011, romanizes how a word is pronounced: a final consonant links to a following vowel (백암 → Baegam), consonants assimilate (백마 → Baengma, 종로 → Jongno, 왕십리 → Wangsimni, 신라 → Silla), ㄷ ㅌ before 이 become j ch (같이 → gachi), and ㄱ ㄷ ㅂ ㅈ next to ㅎ are aspirated (좋고 → joko). ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ before ㅎ in nouns keep the h (묵호 → Mukho); choose verbs to aspirate them (잡혀 → japyeo). Tensing is not shown (압구정 → Apgujeong). Personal names put the family name first and leave the given name’s syllables unchanged (한복남 → Han Boknam), and transliteration follows the spelling letter by letter for reverse conversion (없었습니다 → eobs-eoss-seubnida). Type a hyphen before 도, 시, 군, 구 … to keep administrative units apart (제주-도 → Jeju-do with capitals).

Limitations

• Kanji and hanja are not converted: their reading depends on the word. Convert their kana or Hangul reading instead.
• From kana alone the tool cannot see word boundaries: ou is always ō (思う, omou, comes out omō), は inside a word stays ha (こんにちは → konnichiha), and the apostrophe between vowels of different kanji (Hoso'o) is not added.
• Korean sound changes that depend on the meaning are not applied: the inserted ㄴ in compounds (학여울 is Hangnyeoul, here Hagyeoul), ㄴ+ㄹ read nn in some compounds (신문로 is Sinmunno, here Sinmullo), and nouns versus verbs before ㅎ (choose the option).
• Korean family names follow the rules (김 Gim, 이 I, 박 Bak); many families use other spellings such as Kim, Lee and Park.
• Greek stress is shown only where the Greek text has accents; words in capitals usually have none.
• For romaji → kana, ti, tu, di, du are read as ち つ ぢ づ (as most keyboards do); type thi, twu, dhi, dwu for ティ トゥ ディ ドゥ. A long ō becomes おう in hiragana (おお in words like おおさか must be typed oo).
• Works on up to 2,000,000 characters at a time.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.