English Phonetic Transcription Translator and Pronunciation Dictionary
First time here?
Thank you for your interest!
Here's how it works.
This phonetic translator has several settings, such as Choose English dialect.
Each time you change the settings, the phonetic transcription of the sample texts below is automatically updated.
The only exceptions are premium features (Read the text aloud and Translate the text into your native language). We already created computer-generated audio for each sample text for you.
Transcription above each word
Transcription under each line of text
Transcription under each paragraph of text
Phonetic symbols cheat sheet
How to use this English phonetic translator
Introduction
This phonetic translator will help you obtain very accurate phonetic transcription of your English text.
It uses the symbols of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) — the most popular phonetic transcription system in the world.
In addition to IPA, this tool also supports several types of phonetic spelling.
This phonetic translator supports three most common English dialects: British, American and Australian. The number of English words for each dialect in our database is indicated in the following table:
| American English | 134,000 words |
| British English | 130,000 words |
| Australian English | 92,000 words |
The numbers in the table don't include modified word forms. For example, the words "translate", "translates", "translating" and "translated" are all counted as one word.
The pronunciation of each word in the database was manually checked by a member of our team.
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"
Number of audio recordings in our English pronunciation dictionary
We hired professional voice-over artists to record the correct pronunciation of the most popular English words. The number of the audio recordings is indicated in the following table. Click the buttons to listen to the sample words.
| Mike | American English | 20,000 words |
Mike
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| Lela | American English | 10,000 words |
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Lela
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| Jeevin | American English | 3,700 words |
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Jeevin
Jeevin
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| Andrew | British English | 9,400 words |
Andrew
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Multiple pronunciations of English words
Some English words are spelled the same, but are pronounced differently and have different meanings. They are called homographs. Compare:
| His pronunciation is perfect /ˈpɝfɪkt/. | ↔ | I want to perfect /pɚˈfɛkt/ my pronuncation. |
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.
Pronunciation variants (when native speakers from different regions pronounce a word differently, or when the pronunciation changes in rapid speech) are highlighted in blue. Just like with homographs, you can also hover your cursor over the word to see all possible variants or click/tap it to select the right pronunciation.
Premium features: high-quality computer-generated audio and automatic translation
The subscription Premium gives you access to some additional features in this phonetic translator:
- You will be able to generate the audio of your text using a selection of high-quality text-to-speech voices.
- You will be able to obtain an automatic translation of your text into your native language.
- You will get access to video recordings of native speakers slowly pronouncing the most popular words.
Please read our FAQ to learn more about premium features.
Built-in English dictionary
This phonetic translator has a built-in English dictionary, WordNet. It contains more than 140,000 English words.
Here's what you need to do to activate the dictionary:
- For the setting Transcription display options select the option "transcription above each word".
- In the section Choose what you will see when you click the word turn on the option "word's meaning".
- 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:
- For the setting Transcription display options select the option "transcription above each word".
- In the section Choose what you will see when you click the word turn on the option " to word list".
- After submitting your text, click on the word you want to add to the word list and then click the button " to word list".
- You will be prompted to select the transcription and enter the meaning/translation of the word (the latter for most languages is optional).
- 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:
- export it into a file (Word, Excel, plain text),
- print it from your browser,
- share it with other people (for example, your students),
- 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"
Broad and narrow transcription
For American English this phonetic translator can show both broad (phonemic) and narrow transcriptions. Please read here about phonemes and allophones to decide which type of transcription you need.
Case-sensitive converter
We wanted to create a very precise tool, so we decided to make this phonetic converter case-sensitive. For some words, it makes a difference. For example, the English words August and august mean different things and may be pronounced differently depending on the context.
If you want to obtain the best results, please submit the English text which is spelled correctly. Misspelling the words (english, ENGLISH) may give unpredictable results.
How to use the setting "Edit transcription"
Sometimes you may encounter one of the following situations:
- A very rare word was not converted at all.
- You want to suggest a better transcription for a word.
In either case here's what you can do:
- For the setting Transcription display options select the option "transcription above each word".
- In the section Choose what you will see when you click the word turn on the option "Edit transcription".
- After submitting your text, click on the word which transcription you want to correct and then click the button Edit transcription.
- If you are suggesting a different transcription for a word that can already be converted, there's one additional step. Go to My Account. Click on Customize my experience and turn on the option I want to suggest changes in the transcription for the words that can already be converted.
In any case, the new transcription will only be visible to yourself. We will add an option to see the transcriptions submitted by other users later.
How to use the setting "Hide transcription"
Some people prefer to hide the phonetic transcription of the most common words in order to make the text less cluttered. Here's how you can do it:
- For the setting Transcription display options select the option "transcription above each word".
- In the section Choose what you will see when you click the word turn on the option "Hide transcription".
- After submitting your text, click on the word which transcription you want to hide and then click the button Hide transcription.
Next time you submit the text, the transcription of this word will not be displayed.
If you want to undo this action, go to My Account. Click on Customize my experience and go to the section Undo the action Hide transcription.
Highlighting of high-frequency English words
In the section Advanced options you will find a special option that allows you to highlight high-frequency English words. The words from different frequency intervals will be highlighted in the following colors:
| 1–1000 | 1001–2000 | 2001–3000 | 3001–4000 | 4001–5000 |
If you want to make the frequency analysis of your text and obtain the detailed statistics, please use English word frequency counter.
You can choose one of the two frequency lists:
- The frequency word list based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English
- The subtitle-based frequency word list
Learning English as second language: phonetic transcription can help you improve your English pronunciation
English pronunciation can be very confusing. As you know, there are no strict pronunciation rules in the English language, so when you see an unknown English word, you cannot be 100% sure how to pronounce it.
The same English letter, or combination of letters, can be pronounced differently in different words. Moreover, the same English word can be pronounced in different ways by native English speakers from different countries, or even from the same country! That makes the English language hard to learn and understand.
This tool will serve you as an English 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 English audio and video recordings, your pronunciation and listening skills in the English language will improve.
Do you learn or teach English?
We know sometimes English may seem complicated. We don't want you to waste your time.
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English pronunciation dictionaries that we recommend
Some of the dictionaries listed below are not really pronunciation dictionaries, but just regular English dictionaries. However we used all of them extensively when we were proofreading our database with pronunciations of English words.
American English
- Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition
- Merriam-Webster's Advanced Learner's English Dictionary
British English
- Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary
- Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary
- Collins English Dictionary
Australian English
Mobile apps with English dictionaries
Some English dictionaries mentioned above are available as mobile apps.
American English
British English
- English Pronouncing Dictionary
- English Pronouncing Dictionary
- Cambridge English Dictionary for Advanced Learners
- Cambridge English Dictionary for Advanced Learners
Check our English phonetic subtitle converter and obtain something like this:
Greetings from the developer Timur
Find out how to activate your brain and learn faster (4 min.)
Timur Baytukalov. A Complete Guide to Language Learning. Part 1: Learning Pronunciation
Free Webinar "Learning English pronunciation the smart way" (26 min.)
- Phonetics and pronunciation glossary
- International Phonetic Alphabet for English - IPA Chart
- English Phonetic Subtitle Converter
- English dictionaries online – Project Modelino
- English alphabet – Wikipedia
- English phonology – Wikipedia
- Standard American English (General American) – Wikipedia
- Standard British English (Received Pronunciation) – Wikipedia
- Wiktionary – Wiktionary
- Learner's Dictionary – online version of Merriam-Webster's Advanced Learner's Dictionary
- Merriam-Webster's Dictionary – online version of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
American English, British English, English, English phonetics, English pronunciation, IPA, IPA chart, IPA translator, dictionary, language learning, phonetic dictionary, phonetic transcription, subtitle converter
To develop this translator, we used information from different sources mentioned on this page. The phonetic transcription was taken from these sources in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada (Paragraph 29, Fair Dealing for the purpose of education).
