Minion Translator

Kevin's birthday was the first thing I fed this Minion translator, and the very first version called it a "banana birthday." Cute. Also wrong, since "happy" doesn't mean banana, even to a Minion. These days it comes back as "appy birthday Kevin! me eat cake hehe," which sounds exactly like a little yellow guy in goggles.

Got Minionese you can't follow? Paste it in. It gives you its best guess in plain English, giggles stripped out.

What Does Bello Mean?

Hello. Bello is the Minion greeting, and it's lifted from Italian, where bello means beautiful. So every time a Minion says hi, it's sort of calling you gorgeous. Poopaye is goodbye, and tank yu is thank you, which needs no help at all.

Is Minionese a Real Language?

Not really, and that's the fun of it. Pierre Coffin, the French guy who co-directed Despicable Me back in 2010, does the Minion voices himself, every one of them sped up in the studio until he sounds about knee-high to a toddler. He builds their lines out of scraps of Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean and English, plus a lot of food words. Kanpai is Japanese for cheers. Hana, dul, sae is Korean for one, two, three. Gelato is just gelato.

No grammar exists, and there's no official dictionary, which hasn't stopped fans from filling whole websites with word lists, song lyrics and arguments over what papoy really means. Fans have spent years collecting the words that come up in the films, and that's the list the tool leans on. Wikipedia's Minions page has the full film history, from Gru's lab to their own movies.

A Pocket Phrasebook

Minionese	English
bello	hello
poopaye	goodbye
tank yu	thank you
po ka	what?
para tu	for you
bi-do	I'm sorry
bee do bee do	fire alarm, emergency
stupa	stop
tulaliloo ti amo	we love you
muak muak muak	kiss kiss kiss
hana, dul, sae	one, two, three
kanpai	cheers
gelato	ice cream
la boda	wedding
papoy	toy
me want banana	I want a banana (always)

Three Ways It Went Bananas

Banana birthday was mistake number one. The model loved the word so much that it started sticking it in for anything even slightly cheerful, from birthdays to a sunny day to a good grade on a spelling test. I had to spell out that happy stays happy.

Mistake two hid in "thank you for the pizza," which looked like the easiest test of the lot until I actually read what came back and spotted the problem. Out came "tank yu para tu pizza," which reads like "thank you for you pizza," because para tu means for you. One line in the prompt fixed it. Now it says "para la pizza."

Then it went the other way and got chatty. Kevin's birthday grew into "bello kevin! po ka appy birthday! para tu cake, me want banana, kampai! hehehe." Nobody asked for the kampai! These days it has to stay about as long as what you typed, and it can't bolt on extra bits.

Real Runs, Copied Out

1. thank you for the pizza, goodbye → tank yu para la pizza, poopaye hehe.
2. where is my banana? i'm hungry → po ka is me banana? me hungry hehehe
3. sorry, i broke the toy → bi-do, me broke papoy hehehe
4. one two three, go! → hana dul sae, go! hehe
5. hello my friends, i love you → bello me amigos, me love yu hehe
6. bee do bee do! stupa! → Fire alarm! Stop!

Number six went backwards, Minion in and plain English out, and it was the only one where the giggles vanished completely, which felt a little sad to me. And the giggle count changes every run, because a Minion who giggles the same way twice isn't really a Minion.

Where I'd Send It

Kids' birthday invites, mostly. "Bello! Kevin is turning 6, come eat cake, poopaye!" gets read aloud at the dinner table in a squeaky voice, guaranteed. It's good for a lunchbox note too, or a sign on the bathroom door that says stupa.

I'd skip it for anything a teacher or a doctor's office actually has to read and act on, because nobody at the front desk wants to work out what bi-do means at 8 in the morning. A permission slip in Minionese is how your kid misses the zoo trip.

Want another made-up voice? The UwU Translator is just as squeaky, and the Yoda Translator scrambles your word order instead. The rest wait on the translators page.

Po Ka? Your Questions

What language do the Minions speak? Minionese. It's a jumble Pierre Coffin made up from bits of Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese, Korean and English, with food words thrown in.

How do you say I love you in Minion? Me love yu, in this tool. Fan lists give "tulaliloo ti amo" for we love you, and ti amo is straight Italian.

Who voices the Minions? Pierre Coffin. He co-directed the first film and recorded nearly all the Minion voices himself, speeding them up to get that squeak.

Is there a Minion translator with sound? No sound here, just text. Read it out in your highest voice, which works better than any robot anyway.

What does poopaye mean? Goodbye. Kids find it funny for obvious reasons. So do I, if I'm honest.