English to Hebrew Transliteration

Transliteration represents the sound of a word in a different alphabet. Translation conveys the meaning of a word in a different language. This tool transliterates: it picks Hebrew letters whose sounds approximate the English input. It does not convert meaning.

First it checks a small built-in dictionary of common biblical and Hebrew-origin words (shalom, amen, hallelujah, torah, et cetera) and returns the standard Hebrew spelling. For words not in that list, it falls back to a sound-based letter map: each English letter or common digraph (sh, ch, th, ts) is replaced with the closest Hebrew letter.

Most modern and classical Hebrew text is written without nikud (vowel points). Vowels are inferred from context, root, and binyan. Adding correct vowel points requires real Hebrew parsing, which is well beyond a phonetic tool. For learning or singing, look up a vocalized (mefukad) text from a printed Tanakh.

They are letter-level approximations. Hebrew distinguishes sounds that English does not (bet vs vet, kaf vs khaf, tet vs tav), and the same Latin letter often corresponds to multiple Hebrew letters depending on the word. Treat the phonetic output as a starting point; for actual Hebrew spelling, look the word up in a Hebrew dictionary.

Hebrew text is read right to left, and modern browsers handle the direction automatically when Hebrew Unicode characters appear. The letter sequence in the output is in logical (memory) order; rendering goes right to left.