Arabizi translator.
Arabizi is what people use when they want to write Arabic but only have a Latin keyboard. marhaba for مرحبا, shukran for شكراً, and 3arabi for عربي, digit and all. It started in chatrooms and SMS in the 90s and stuck around. The Arabizi translator below turns chat spelling into Arabic script, and under it sits the full chart of how the system works.
Type Arabizi, get the Arabic word.
Going the other way? Convert Arabic script to Arabizi →
Paste it into the converter going the other way and you get the chat spelling out: مرحبا becomes mar7aba, حبيبي becomes 7abibi.
What is Arabizi?
Arabizi (also called Arabish, Franco-Arabic, or just 3arabi) is Arabic written with Latin letters and numbers. The numbers stand in for Arabic letters that don't have a clean Latin match, mostly the throat sounds and the emphatic letters.
It's not an official writing system. There's no standard spelling. Two people from the same city might write the same word three different ways. But it's all over Instagram captions and WhatsApp group chats, and if you're learning Arabic, you'll run into it.
The numbers look like the letters.
Put the shapes side by side and the whole trick clicks. Seven digits cover the sounds English can't quite spell; three take an apostrophe for the dotted letters below.
The apostrophe means “add the dot.”
Once you know ع → 3 and that غ is ع with a dot, then 3' → غ makes sense without memorizing anything new.
Letter mappings.
Most letters map cleanly. A few have alternatives because real Arabizi is inconsistent. Showing both is more honest than picking one.
The same chart, with the combos and spelling variants explained, has its own page: Arabizi letters.
Phrases you'll see in WhatsApp chats and TikTok comments.
And at message length.
The digits keep their jobs no matter how long the line gets. Read 3 as ع and 7 as ح and these stop looking like code.
Why Arabizi exists in the first place.
Phones and computers couldn't handle Arabic script well into the 2000s. SMS had no Arabic support on most networks. Early websites garbled the right-to-left layout. So people made do: Latin keys plus numbers to fill in the gaps.
Arabic works fine on every device now, but Arabizi didn't go away. It's faster on a Latin keyboard if you haven't learned the Arabic layout, and it mixes naturally with English in bilingual chats. Some corners of the internet (username fields, old forums) still choke on the script, too.
Arabic script, if you're serious about the language.
Arabizi has no diacritics and no fixed spelling, and it won't show up in books or news. It's a chat shortcut. But knowing it has real uses while you build the script.
Arabic script
What to learn- ✓Used everywhere formal, from books to street signs.
- ✓Has diacritics, the marks that fix pronunciation.
- ✓One spelling per word. Universal.
- ✓Required to read anything real.
Arabizi
A useful bridge- ✓Read what Arabic speakers post online before you can read the script.
- ✓Typing 7abibi a few hundred times burns ح into memory faster than flashcards.
- ✓You'll need it to chat with people who type that way.
- ×No standard spelling, and you'll never see it in formal writing.
Questions about Arabizi, answered.
What is Arabizi?
Arabizi is Arabic written with Latin letters and numbers, the way people type it when the keyboard in front of them hasn't got any Arabic on it. The digits cover the sounds English has no letter for: 3 stands in for ع, 7 for ح, 5 for خ. It came out of SMS and chatrooms in the 90s and it never went away, so you still see it all over WhatsApp, Instagram comments and TikTok.
How does this Arabizi translator work?
It checks what you type against a database of about a thousand Arabic words first, so common spellings come back with the right script and the meaning attached. If the word is not in there, it falls back to a letter-by-letter conversion off the chart below and tells you it's guessing. Worth knowing, because Arabizi has no agreed spelling and a guess is sometimes the honest answer.
Can I paste a whole message?
You can. A phrase the database knows, like saba7 alkhayr, comes back as script with the meaning attached. Anything longer falls through to the letter chart and gets converted sound by sound, which gives you readable Arabic but no translation. For a long message, feeding it in a few words at a time gets you further.
Does it translate Arabizi into English?
Not as such. What it does is change the script: mar7aba goes in, مرحبا comes out, same word either way. Where the word is one of the thousand in the database you also get the English meaning next to it, but the job of this tool is the alphabet rather than the language.
Why does Arabizi use numbers instead of letters?
Because the numbers look like the letters they replace. Turn ع on its side and you have a 3. ح has the same curl as a 7 written the way it is written across the Arab world. The same trick covers ص with 9, ط with 6, ء with 2 and خ with 5, and the dotted letters get an apostrophe on top: 3’ for غ, 6’ for ظ, 9’ for ض.
Is there a correct way to spell things in Arabizi?
No, and that's the thing that trips people up. The same word turns up as 7abibi, habibi and 7bibi depending on who is typing and where they are from. Egyptians reach for different spellings than Lebanese do. Nothing standardises it, which is exactly why the converter shows you close matches rather than insisting on one answer.
Which dialect does the translator understand?
Arabizi itself belongs to no dialect. People type the Arabic they speak, so an Egyptian message and a Lebanese one look different in Latin letters too. The word database here leans on standard Arabic plus the chat staples everyone shares, yalla and tamam and the rest. A heavy dialect spelling still converts through the letter chart; you just get the script without a meaning next to it.
Is this translator free?
Completely. No account, no limit on how much you convert, and the whole thing runs in your browser, so what you type never leaves your machine.
Can it go the other way, Arabic to Arabizi?
Yes, on its own page. Paste Arabic script into the Arabic to Arabizi converter and you get the chat spelling out, either with the digits or in a letters-only style if you'd rather not use them.
Should I learn Arabizi or the Arabic script?
The script, if you've any intention of reading Arabic. Arabizi will not appear in a book, a newspaper, a form or a street sign, and its lack of standard spelling makes it a poor thing to build habits on. It's a decent bridge while the alphabet is still landing, and plenty of fluent speakers use it daily in chat, but treat it as a stopgap rather than the destination.