Morse code translator
Morse code represents each letter as a sequence of short and long signals; dots and dashes. E is a single dot, T a single dash, and SOS is three dots, three dashes, three dots. Letters are separated by a space and words by a slash. This translator uses the ITU international alphabet, including digits and punctuation. Two other letter-for-letter systems that used to have pages of their own sit on tabs beside it: Grade 1 Braille, in both directions, and Pig Latin.
How to translate Morse
The timing is the part people miss. A dash lasts three dot-lengths, the gap inside a letter is one, between letters three and between words seven. Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail assigned the shortest codes to the commonest English letters, which they estimated by counting the type in a printer’s case — which is why E is one dot and Q is four symbols.
Speed is quoted in words per minute against a single reference word, PARIS, which is exactly 50 dot-lengths including the gap that follows it. At 20 words per minute a dot is 60 milliseconds. That definition is why two operators can agree on a speed at all: counting real words would make the figure depend on which words you sent.
The code is not a historical curiosity. Aviation navigation beacons still identify themselves in Morse, amateur radio still uses it because a narrow signal gets through where voice does not, and it is still taught for exactly that reason — although commercial maritime use ended in 1999 when GMDSS replaced it.
Two other letter-for-letter systems are carried in this panel, each of which had a page of its own until recently. Braille is the six-dot cell, and what this writes is Grade 1: one cell per letter, with a number sign in front of a digit so that the letters a to j can stand for 1 to 0. Published Braille is Grade 2, which adds nearly two hundred contractions and reads about a third shorter, so Grade 1 suits a label, a puzzle or an explanation of how the cell is laid out, and does not suit producing anything a Braille reader will actually use. Pig Latin is the schoolyard one: the leading consonants move to the end and "ay" follows them, so "hello" comes back as "ellohay". Both of its awkward cases are handled. The "qu" travels as a single sound, giving "eenquay" for "queen", and a leading y counts as a consonant while a y anywhere later counts as a vowel, which is how "yellow" becomes "ellowyay".
What people use it for
- Working out what a string of dots and dashes says
- Hearing a message at proper Morse timing
- Writing a message out for a scout or cadet exercise
- Checking a beacon or call-sign identifier
- Learning the alphabet one letter at a time
- Writing a name out in Braille cells for a label or a puzzle
- Putting a sentence into Pig Latin with the qu and y rules applied
Questions
Three dots, three dashes, three dots, chosen because the pattern is unmistakable and not as an abbreviation of anything. It is a prosign, sent as one stream with no letter gaps, though written out with gaps it is still understood.
With a slash. Letters are separated by a single space, words by " / ", which is what decoders expect.
Five symbols each, on a sliding scale: 1 is .---- and 5 is ..... , with 0 as five dashes.
Yes: full stop, comma, question mark, apostrophe, slash, brackets, colon, equals, plus, hyphen, quotation mark and at. Anything with no code is listed under the output.
No. Morse has no upper and lower case, so text is folded to one case before it is encoded.
No. Regional Morse variants exist for accented characters, but they are not part of the ITU international alphabet, so they are reported as unsupported rather than guessed at.
A dot of 70 milliseconds, roughly 17 words per minute, at 620 Hz. Fast enough to sound right, slow enough to follow along.
In words per minute against the reference word PARIS, which is exactly 50 dot-lengths long. At 20 words per minute a dot lasts 60 milliseconds.
No. It reads dots and dashes you type or paste; pulling code out of audio is a signal-processing job rather than a lookup.
Yes, in amateur radio and in aviation, where navigation beacons identify themselves in Morse. Commercial maritime use ended in 1999.
Grade 1 is one cell per letter, which is what this writes, with a number sign ahead of any digit so a to j can stand for 1 to 0. Grade 2 adds nearly two hundred contractions, single cells for whole words such as "the" and for groups such as "ing", and it is what published Braille uses because Grade 1 runs about a third longer.
Only through a refreshable display or a screen reader. These are Unicode Braille characters on a screen, which is a picture of the cells and not embossed Braille; pasting them into a document produces nothing a Braille reader can feel.
The letter cells are largely shared, so the alphabet travels. Contractions and accented letters do not: each language has its own code, and a French or Arabic contraction means nothing in the English one.
Yes, on the Braille → text tab. It is a separate operation rather than a direction of the same one, which is why it has a tab of its own instead of sharing the swap button with the Morse pair. Anything that is not a Braille cell is dropped rather than guessed at.
Move the leading consonants to the end of the word and add "ay", so "hello" becomes "ellohay". A word that starts with a vowel takes "way" instead, giving "appleway". Capitals stay on the first letter of a capitalised word.
Because q and u are one sound and travel together, so it comes out as "eenquay". The other rule worth knowing is the y: a leading y counts as a consonant and a later one as a vowel, which turns "yellow" into "ellowyay".
Either. The game has no authority behind it and both endings are in ordinary use for vowel-initial words. This one writes "way".
No. Both the translation and the audio are generated in this page.