Simplified ⇄ Traditional Chinese Converter

Why character-by-character conversion is not enough

Simplified and Traditional Chinese are not a simple one-to-one mapping. One simplified character often corresponds to several traditional ones depending on meaning: 发 becomes 發 (to send) or 髮 (hair), 后 becomes 後 (after) or 后 (queen), 干 becomes 幹, 乾 or 干. A converter that swaps characters individually produces text that native readers instantly recognise as machine-generated. This tool uses OpenCC's dictionaries, which convert at the phrase level and choose the correct variant from context, the same engine used by Wikipedia and many publishing workflows.

Beyond characters, Taiwan and Hong Kong differ from each other and from the mainland in vocabulary and some glyph standards. 软件 is 軟體 in Taiwan but 軟件 in Hong Kong; 鼠标 is 滑鼠 in Taiwan. The 'with phrases' options translate this regional vocabulary as well, which matters for product interfaces, marketing copy and subtitles aimed at a specific market.

How to use it

Paste text into the left box. With Auto-detect enabled, the tool inspects the characters and picks a sensible direction: simplified input converts to Traditional (Taiwan, with phrases) and traditional input converts to Simplified. Override the direction from the dropdown at any time — choosing a direction manually turns auto-detect off for that session. The converted text appears on the right; Copy puts it on your clipboard and Swap feeds the output back as input so you can compare a round trip.

Conversion dictionaries are downloaded on first use (about 1 MB for simplified-to-traditional, much less for the reverse) and then cached by your browser, so subsequent conversions are instant and work offline. Text itself is never sent anywhere.

Which direction should I pick?

For readers in Taiwan, use Simplified → Traditional (Taiwan) with phrases; without phrases if you want to keep mainland vocabulary but Taiwan glyph forms. For Hong Kong, use the Hong Kong variant, which follows the HKSCS glyph standard. Plain Simplified → Traditional (OpenCC standard) is a neutral choice for classical texts or when the audience spans regions. Going the other way, Traditional (Taiwan) → Simplified with phrases also converts Taiwan vocabulary back to mainland terms, which is what you want for documents destined for the mainland.

Background: two scripts, one language

Simplified characters were introduced by the People's Republic of China in 1956 and 1964 to raise literacy, reducing stroke counts of about 2,000 common characters and merging some homophones into one form. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau kept the traditional forms, and later standardised them separately — Taiwan's Ministry of Education standard and Hong Kong's HKSCS differ in glyph details. OpenCC, the open-source project behind this converter, was started in 2010 by Guo Yunhe (BYVoid) to do what earlier tools could not: convert phrases and regional vocabulary, not just characters, using curated dictionaries that are still maintained by the community.

Where it is used

Software localisation is the biggest use: one zh-CN string file becomes zh-TW and zh-HK variants in seconds, then a native speaker reviews the vocabulary. Publishers convert manuscripts between mainland and Taiwan editions; subtitle groups and fansub communities release both versions; e-commerce sellers localise listings for Taiwan and Hong Kong marketplaces; researchers normalise mixed-script corpora before search or analysis. Wikipedia serves each Chinese article in several variants from a single source using the same approach. If you are localising a whole product, pair this with JSON formatting for string files and the word counter to check that converted copy still fits its length limits and keep the converted text under review, since a handful of terms (especially technology and brand names) always need a human decision. To check exactly what a conversion changed, run the two versions through Text Compare.

Frequently asked questions