Chinese Pinyin Translator and Pronunciation Tool

拼音 ➔ pīnyīn
拼音 ➔ /pʰin¹jin¹/

Links to online dictionaries:

56 ➔ 五十六 /wǔ shí liù/

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Transcription above each word

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High-quality computer-generated audio

XiaoqiuChina

YunjianChina


Transcription under each line of text

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High-quality computer-generated audio

XiaoqiuChina

YunjianChina


Transcription under each paragraph of text

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High-quality computer-generated audio

XiaoqiuChina

YunjianChina


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Watch my latest YouTube video "Don't use a dictionary when you learn a language!"

Phonetic symbols cheat sheet

How to use this Chinese pinyin translator

Introduction

This online pinyin translator can convert Chinese text into several different formats. All of them follow the pronunciation rules of standard Mandarin Chinese:

  1. Pinyin with tone marks (pīnyīn) – the most common way to transcribe Chinese characters
  2. Pinyin with tone numbers (pin¹yin¹)
  3. Pinyin without tone marks (pinyin) – this method can be used for memorizing the tones
  4. Hanzi with tone marks (拼音(– –)) – this method will help you memorize the pronunciation of individual sounds
  5. Colored hanzi () – a variation on the fourth method
  6. International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) (pʰin¹jin¹) – the most accurate method of showing the pronunciation of Chinese words

This pinyin converter understands both simplified and traditional characters.

A special option corrects tones for 一, 不. As you may know, the pronunciation of these two characters changes depending on the surrounding words.

If you need to copy the phonetic transcription into another program or print it, please read our FAQ.

Watch a tutorial "How to convert text to phonetic transcription and listen to audio recordings of words"

High-quality computer-generated audio

You can easily create audio for your text using this pronunciation generator. Listen to the voice samples below.

XiaoxiaoChina
YunxiChina
YunjianChina
XiaoyiChina
YunyangChina
XiaochenChina
XiaohanChina
XiaomengChina
XiaomoChina
XiaoqiuChina
XiaoruiChina
XiaoshuangChina
XiaoxuanChina
XiaoyanChina
XiaoyouChina
XiaozhenChina
YunfengChina
YunhaoChina
YunxiaChina
YunyeChina
YunzeChina
XiaochenMultilingualChina
XiaorouChina
XiaoxiaoDialectsChina
XiaoxiaoMultilingualChina
XiaoyuMultilingualChina
YunjieChina
YunyiMultilingualChina
ZhiyuChina

HsiaoChenTaiwan
YunJheTaiwan
HsiaoYuTaiwan

Text-to-speech service is provided by the following companies:

  • Google
  • Amazon
  • Microsoft

Each time you generate an audio, we have to pay one of these companies.

Text-to-speech service is only available with the subscription Premium.

Audio recordings of real people (native Chinese speakers)

We hired professional voice-over artists to record the correct pronunciation of the most popular Chinese words. The number of the audio recordings is indicated in the following table. Click the buttons to listen to the sample words.

Number of audio recordings in our Chinese pronunciation generator

Qili 14,000 words
Qili

Hongmei 14,000 words
Hongmei

Audio recordings of real people are available with the subscriptions Basic and Premium.

Multiple pronunciations of Chinese words

Some Chinese words are spelled the same, but are pronounced differently and have different meanings. They are called homographs. Compare:

地方方言 [dìfāng] 这个地方真美 [dìfang]

The phonetic translator will highlight homographs in green. If you hover your cursor over these words or tap them on your mobile device, you will see all possible pronunciations.

At the moment this phonetic translator cannot yet decide which pronunciation is correct for such words. You will need to choose the correct pronunciation yourself depending on the context.

Translation to your native language

This pronunciation generator allows you to obtain an automatic translation of your text to your native language.

Automatic translation service is provided by a third-party company (Google). Each time you translate text into another language, we have to pay Google a small fee.

Translation service is only available with the subscription Premium.

Built-in Chinese dictionary

This pinyin translator has several built-in dictionaries. They are listed in the following table:

Chinese ➔ English 122,000 words CC-CEDICT
Chinese ➔ French 46,000 words CFDICT
Chinese ➔ German 46,000 words HanDeDict
Chinese ➔ Russian 122,000 words 大БКРС

Before you can activate them, make sure this page is displayed in the right language. For example, for Chinese-English dictionary set the page language to "English" in the top left corner.

Here's what you need to do to activate the dictionary:

  1. For the setting Transcription display options select the option "transcription above each word".
  2. In the section Choose what you will see when you click the word turn on the option "Word's meaning".
  3. After submitting your text, click on any word in the results to see its definition.

Create your own custom word lists

You can create your own custom word lists using this phonetic translator. Here's how you can do it:

  1. For the setting Transcription display options select the option "transcription above each word".
  2. In the section Choose what you will see when you click the word turn on the option " to word list".
  3. After submitting your text, click on the word you want to add to the word list and then click the button " to word list".
  4. You will be prompted to select the transcription and enter the meaning/translation of the word (the latter for most languages is optional).
  5. Once you finished adding words to your word list, click on My Account at the top of the page and then on My word lists. You will see the list of all your word lists.

There are so many things you can do with your word list:

  1. export it to a file (Word, Excel, plain text),
  2. print it from your browser,
  3. share it with other people (for example, your students),
  4. practice pronunciation of every word using the audio recordings of real people (if available) or high-quality text-to-speech voices.

Watch a tutorial "How to create custom word lists"

Chinese characters worksheet generator

This tool also allows you to create your own worksheet to practice writing Chinese characters. In order to do that, you will need to submit some Chinese text. Then you may choose your worksheet settings:

  • How many times each character will be displayed
  • Regular (kaishu) or running (xingshu) script
  • Font size
  • Grid style

Highlighting of high-frequency Chinese words

In the section Advanced options you will find a special option that allows you to highlight high-frequency Chinese words. The words from different frequency intervals will be highlighted in the following colors:

1-1000 1001-2000 2001-3000 3001-4000 4001-5000 5001-7000 7001-10000

If you want to make the frequency analysis of your text and obtain the detailed statistics, please use Chinese word frequency counter.

You can choose:

  • Vocabulary lists for Chinese Proficiency Test HSK
  • Subtlex – subtitle-based word frequency list
  • Google Pinyin word frequency list

The Chinese words required for the HSK exam will be highlighted as follows:

HSK 1 HSK 2 HSK 3 HSK 4 HSK 5 HSK 6

Learning Chinese as second language: phonetic transcription can help you improve your Chinese pronunciation

Chinese pronunciation can be confusing for people who are just starting to learn Chinese.

The official system to transcribe Chinese characters into Latin script is hanyu pinyin, but it can be very misleading sometimes. Take for the example the syllables "qiu" and "you". The final in both syllables is the same, but they are written in different ways!

If you want to progress quickly we highly recommend you use International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to help you learn how to pronounce Chinese words correctly.

This tool will serve you as an Chinese pronunciation guide and will help you save time. You will no longer need to look up the pronunciation of words in a dictionary.

If you use the phonetic transcription regularly in combination with Chinese audio and video recordings, your pronunciation and listening skills in the Chinese language will improve.

Do you learn or teach Chinese?

We know sometimes Chinese may seem complicated. We don't want you to waste your time.

Check all our tools and learn Chinese faster!

Check our Chinese pinyin subtitle converter and obtain something like this:

Audio recordings of 14,000 Chinese words

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Dec 1 2019

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Nov 6 2015

Handwriting worksheet generator in Chinese pinyin translator

I added Chinese characters worksheet generator in Chinese pinyin translator. For that, I used the plugin TCPDF that allows to create PDF documents. When you create a worksheet, you can set...

Nov 2 2015

English translations added in Chinese pinyin translator

There's an update in Chinese pinyin translator. Now, after you submit Chinese text, you may click on any word to see its English translation. The translations are provided by CC-CEDICT. You...

Oct 29 2015

Cantonese pronunciation in pinyin translator

There are major updates in Chinese pinyin translator. Now, if a word has multiple pronunciations, its phonetic transcription will be highlighted in purple. I also added Cantonese pronunciations. Recently the developers of...

Oct 20 2015

Pinyin translator tested with "HSK Standard Course"

If you follow the news thread, you know that during the last few months I was studying Chinese in China. During my stay in China I used some of my...

Jul 9 2015

Updates in Chinese pinyin translator - Chinese numbers and Latin letters

There are several updates in the Chinese pinyin translator. The most important update concerns the translation of Chinese numbers. Now you have several options: do not translate Chinese numbers, example: "101"...

Jun 27 2015

Traditional characters conversion improved in Chinese pinyin translator

I fixed a bug with traditional Chinese characters in Chinese pinyin translator. If you still encounter problems with traditional characters, please let me know. In your email, please specify the...

Mar 24 2015

Alphabetical list of all words with audio or video recordings

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