Elvish Translator (Tengwar)
Type English and see it written in Tengwar, the Elvish script J.R.R. Tolkien devised, in the English general-use mode: letter by letter, with vowels as marks above the consonants. A romanized reading appears beside the glyphs. This writes English in Elvish letters; it does not translate into Quenya or Sindarin.
How to use the elvish translator
- Type an English name, word or phrase. The Tengwar appears as you type, with its romanized reading beside it.
- Spell normally. Silent letters are kept, and th, sh, ch, ng and the other pairs are written with their single Elvish letter.
- Read the romanization to check how each letter was interpreted before using the design.
- Use the glyphs where the Alcarin Tengwar font is present; elsewhere, share the romanized reading.
Examples
| Frodo | Reads: Frodo |
| Gandalf the Grey | Reads: Gandalf Þe Grey |
| Welcome to the Shire | Reads: Welcome To Þe Šire |
About Tengwar
Tengwar is the script Tolkien invented for the Elves of Middle-earth, the letters on the One Ring and on the west gate of Moria. He described it in Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings. Its 24 primary letters are built from two strokes, a stem and a bow, arranged in a grid: four columns for the place of articulation and six rows for the manner, so that related sounds have related shapes: doubling the bow of tinco, t, gives ando, d. Vowels are not letters at all in the most common modes but tehtar, small marks written above a consonant. That design is the reason there is no single "Elvish alphabet": the same letters are read differently depending on the mode, the set of conventions chosen for a given language.
Tolkien wrote Quenya in one mode, Sindarin in another, and English in several. The tengwar on the Ring inscription write the Black Speech; the letters on the title page of The Lord of the Rings write English. This tool uses the English orthographic general-use mode, which follows the spelling of English rather than its sound: silent letters are kept, "knife" starts with a k, and "though" ends with the same letters as "through". Tolkien used this mode himself for English, and it is the mode most tengwar fonts and reference charts describe, which makes it the sensible default for a name or a phrase you want other readers of tengwar to recognize.
Within that mode the tool applies the conventions Tolkien's own samples show. Each vowel is written as a tehta on the consonant that follows it, and when no consonant follows, at the end of a word or before another vowel, it sits on a short carrier, a plain stroke that exists for that purpose. A doubled vowel, as in "Lee" or "Moon", is written as a single vowel mark, and at the end of a word it sits on the long carrier. o is the left-facing curl and u the right-facing one, the general-use arrangement rather than the Quenya one, which swaps them. r is written as rómen before a vowel and as óre elsewhere, as in Tolkien's English. s and z turn to their alternative "nuquerna" shapes when they have to carry a vowel mark. A doubled consonant is written once with a bar beneath it, and an n or m that is not carrying a vowel mark and is followed by a different consonant becomes a bar above that consonant. The consonant pairs th, dh, sh, ch, ph, wh, gh, ng, ck and zh each get the single letter Tolkien assigned to that sound, and qu is written as quesse followed by vala.
Tengwar is not part of Unicode. Fonts that carry it place the letters in the Private Use Area, following the ConScript Unicode Registry allocation at U+E000 to U+E07F, which is what this page emits. Those code points mean nothing outside a font that follows the same allocation, so the page draws the result with Alcarin Tengwar, a font released under the SIL Open Font License and served from this site. Paste the glyphs somewhere without that font and you will see empty boxes or unrelated symbols. For that reason the page shows a romanized reading beside the glyphs. The reading spells out how each letter was interpreted: th appears as þ, dh as ð, sh as š and ng as ñ, so "the Shire" reads as "Þe Šire". That is the form to share in a message or to check before a design is engraved.
Two limits are worth stating plainly. First, this is transcription, not translation: "Frodo lives" comes out as English written in Elvish letters, not as a Quenya or Sindarin sentence. Translating into either language needs Tolkien's vocabulary and grammar, which are partly recorded and much studied, and a person who knows them. Second, there is no decoder, because a tengwar text in one mode reads differently in another, and the page cannot tell which mode a pasted text uses. Several scribal refinements are also left out rather than guessed at: the hooked s-curl that finishes some words, the Beleriand mode in which vowels are full letters, and the ligatures a calligrapher would use. What the tool does, it does the way Tolkien did it for English; what it does not do, it says so.
Frequently asked questions
Does this translate English into Elvish?
No. It writes English in Tengwar, the Elvish script, keeping the English spelling. Quenya and Sindarin are languages with their own words and grammar; "friend" in Sindarin is mellon, and this tool will not give you that. It gives you the letters Tolkien's Elves used, applied to your own words, which is what he did himself when he wrote English in tengwar.
Which tengwar mode does it use?
The English orthographic general-use mode: letters follow English spelling, vowels are marks on the following consonant, o is the left curl and u the right, and r alternates between rómen and óre. It is the mode Tolkien used for English and the one most charts and fonts document. A phonetic mode, or the Beleriand mode with full vowel letters, would produce different and equally valid results; the tool does not offer them.
Why do the glyphs show as boxes when I paste them?
Tengwar is not in Unicode, so the letters live in the Private Use Area, code points that only mean something inside a font that assigns them. This page uses Alcarin Tengwar, served from the site under the SIL Open Font License. Anywhere that font is absent, the same characters appear as empty boxes. Share the romanized reading, or a screenshot, rather than the raw glyphs.
What is the romanized text beside the Elvish?
It is a letter-by-letter reading of the tengwar the tool wrote, so you can check the interpretation. Sounds with a single Elvish letter appear as one character: th as þ, dh as ð, sh as š, ng as ñ, and ck as c. "The Shire" reads as "Þe Šire". If the reading looks wrong, the tengwar will be too, and the spelling you typed is the place to fix it.
Can it read Tengwar back into English?
No. The same letters mean different things in different modes, and a pasted tengwar text carries no label saying which mode it uses, so a decoder would guess. Rather than guess, the tool writes only. If you need to read tengwar, the reference tables in Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings and the mode descriptions on tengwar reference sites are the reliable route.
More translators
