Japanese ⇄ English Translator
Translate both ways, with furigana, romaji and typing help.
This one tool sends text to a translation service. Machine translation needs a model far too large to run in a page, so the translate button calls MyMemory, a free public API, directly from your browser. Your text goes to them; treat it as you would any website and do not paste anything confidential. Everything else on this page — the readings, romaji, kanji breakdown and typing guide — runs entirely on your device and keeps working even when the translation service is rate-limited.
About the Japanese ⇄ English Translator
Translate between English and Japanese, then see how to actually read and type the result: the reading printed above each word, the whole thing in hiragana, katakana and Hepburn romaji, a kanji breakdown with meanings and on/kun readings, and the exact keystrokes for a Japanese IME. Hear it read aloud with your device's own voice.
How to use it
- 1Choose the direction, or paste your text and let the tool spot it.
- 2Press Translate.
- 3Read the result with furigana above each word, plus full hiragana and romaji.
- 4Check the kanji breakdown and the keystrokes for typing it yourself.
What you get
- Both directions, English to Japanese and Japanese to English
- Reading printed above each word, the way furigana is set
- Full hiragana, katakana and Hepburn romaji
- Kanji meanings with on and kun readings
- Exact keystrokes for typing it on a Japanese IME
- Read aloud using your device's own Japanese voice
- Marks which readings are certain and which are approximate
Frequently asked questions
Is my text sent anywhere?
The translation is, and only the translation. Machine translation needs a model far too large to run in a web page, so pressing Translate sends your text to MyMemory, a free public translation service, directly from your browser. Everything else — the readings, romaji, kanji breakdown and typing guide — runs on your device. Do not paste anything confidential.
How accurate is the translation?
Good for everyday sentences and unreliable for anything subtle, like any free machine translation. The tool shows the service's own match score so you can see whether a result came from a close match in its translation memory or from raw machine translation. Never submit a machine translation as your own work without checking it.
Are the readings always right?
Kana readings are exact, because kana map to sounds one-to-one. Words in the bundled vocabulary are reliable. A single kanji outside that vocabulary is shown with its most common standalone reading and marked as approximate, because the same kanji is often read differently inside a compound. Anything unknown is left blank rather than guessed.
Why is there no furigana for some words?
Because the word is not in the bundled vocabulary. Generating readings for arbitrary Japanese needs a morphological analyser and a dictionary of hundreds of thousands of entries — a multi-megabyte download. Rather than ship that or guess, the tool marks what it does not know.
How do I type Japanese on my keyboard?
Add Japanese as an input source — System Settings → Keyboard on macOS, or the Language settings on Windows — then switch to it with Control+Space or Windows+Space. Type the reading in romaji and press space to convert to kanji. The typing guide on this page shows the exact letters for whatever you translated.
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