Cyrillic to English Translator

Russian on your screen and no clue how to say it? This Cyrillic to English translator reads it out in English letters. Type English and it flips. Sound only, mind you. Hi comes out as privet, and learning that privet means hi? Dictionary job.

How Do You Read the Russian Cyrillic Alphabet in English?

Learn the fakes first. Russian has 33 letters. Six look English and aren't. Hence the famous shop sign that English eyes read as pectopah. It says restoran.

Looks like	Really says	Word	English letters
В	v	Водка	Vodka
Н	n	Нет	Net
Р	r	Ресторан	Restoran
С	s	Спутник	Sputnik
У	u	Утро	Utro
Х	kh	Хорошо	Khorosho

The chart below has all 33, with the English letters this tool writes for each. Two of them make no sound at all. The hard sign and the soft sign just bend the letter next to them, so the tool drops both, and that's why the Russian word for the Kremlin loses its last letter below.

Which Spelling System Does It Use?

BGN/PCGN, agreed on by British and American geographers for place names. Why pick it? You can check it. Dostoevsky turns up under several English spellings. This gives one. Word starts and spots after a vowel get ye, so Yelena keeps the y. Passports do it differently, which is why yours may say Elena. Neither one's wrong.

Real Names, Straight From the Box

Cyrillic	English letters
Достоевский	Dostoyevskiy
Толстой	Tolstoy
Чехов	Chekhov
Чайковский	Chaykovskiy
Гагарин	Gagarin
Москва	Moskva
Санкт-Петербург	Sankt-Peterburg
Матрёшка	Matryoshka
Борщ	Borshch
Спасибо	Spasibo
Пожалуйста	Pozhaluysta
Чебурашка	Cheburashka
Кремль	Kreml
Елена	Yelena
Красный	Krasnyy
Ђоковић (Serbian)	Đoković

Going From English to Cyrillic

Harder. English spelling lies about sound. My first run dropped the e from Kate and left something that reads as kat, a fine way to insult a Kate. Now a silent e stretches the vowel. A short list of names gets the spelling Russian papers print.

English	Cyrillic
Kate	Кейт
Mike	Майк
Steve	Стив
Michael	Майкл
Emma	Эмма
New York	Ню Йорк
hello world	хэлло ворлд

Russian has no w, no th, no plain h. Those borrow v, t and kh. That last row is English in a Russian coat. A Muscovite would squint.

Serbian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian Cyrillic

Paste those in. They'll read. Serbian comes out in its own Latin spelling, accents and all, so tennis fans get Djokovic the way Belgrade spells it. Ukrainian's extras work too. Typing English only writes Russian, though. Need proper Serbian spelling? Wrong tool, and I'd sooner say so.

Where It Trips

Stress. Russian doesn't mark it, so nothing warns you the weight in Moskva lands on the last syllable. Soft signs vanish as well, and the box can't bring them back. Anything older than the 1918 spelling reform keeps its old letters. Reading a Moscow metro map? Fine. Saying the stations out loud? Get a teacher.

What My First Run Got Wrong

Plenty. I fed it names before writing a word of this page, and a plain letter swap chewed them up. The middle column's the real first-run output.

Typed	First run	Now
Michael	Мичаел	Майкл
New York	Нев Ёрк	Ню Йорк
my name	ми нам	май нейм
THANK YOU	ТАНК ЁУ	СЭНК Ю

Michael got a ch like the one in chair, since nothing told my code that English spells that name like a prank. New York picked up a yo that belongs in Fyodor, so a word-start rule went in, and that rule is also why Yoda now reads right. My test sentence came back with nam for name and a my that rhymed with me, which took two more rules to sort out, and I'm sure there's a name out there that'll still break it by Friday. Thank you was the worst of the lot, because th turned into a hard t and you split into two separate letters, which left me with something close to tank yo-oo on the screen. Steve was fine once the silent e rule went in, and that one rule also fixed Kate, Mike and every other short name I tried.

Passport forms are the other job people bring here, and I'd use this spelling for a web search but copy the one printed on the document for anything official, because a clerk won't care what BGN/PCGN says.

Other scripts? Try the Rune Translator. Greek came first, and the English to Ancient Greek Translator has it. History's on Wikipedia's Cyrillic script article. Everything else? The translators page.

Cyrillic Questions, Answered

How do I translate Cyrillic to English? Paste it in. My test line came back as privet, kak dela, which is a perfect reading and no help at all unless you speak Russian.

Is Cyrillic the same as Russian? No. One's an alphabet. The other's a language that happens to use it, same as Bulgarian and Serbian.

How do I write my name in Cyrillic? Type it. Steve came out right on my test, Michael took a fix, and rare names get sounded out, so ask a Russian speaker before any tattoo.

Can it convert Latin to Cyrillic? Yes. Fyodor was my test word, and it came home in proper Russian spelling. English words get sounded out.

Who invented the Cyrillic alphabet? Not Saint Cyril, oddly. He got the name. His followers did the work, in the First Bulgarian Empire, around the 9th century.

What is faux Cyrillic? Poster trickery. Think a backwards R on a vodka ad. Paste that here and it reads as ya, so you'd get nonsense back.