Simplified ↔ Traditional Chinese Converter

Chinese is written in two standard character sets: Simplified (简体字, used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia) and Traditional (繁體字, used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau). This converter turns text in either script into the other — paste a message, an article, or a document excerpt and copy out the converted version. It auto-detects which script you pasted, so you can usually just hit Convert.

Good conversion is harder than swapping characters one-for-one, because the mapping is not one-to-one: the Simplified character 发 becomes 髮 in 头发 (hair) but 發 in 发现 (discover). That's why this tool matches whole dictionary words first — the same greedy longest-match segmentation our Chinese Translator uses — and only falls back to the most common single-character mapping for characters outside any known word. Rare characters our dictionary has never seen are converted with Azure AI translation — the same fallback the translation pages use — and marked with a small cloud . Every changed character is highlighted in the result, with the original form on hover, so you can see exactly what the conversion did.

Curious how the two scripts came to differ, which countries use which, and which one you should learn? Read our guide to Simplified vs. Traditional Chinese. And if you want the meaning too, the Chinese Translator gives a word-by-word breakdown with pinyin and English in both scripts.

What does this converter do?

It converts Chinese text between Simplified characters (mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia) and Traditional characters (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau). Paste either script, get the other back with every change highlighted. The direction auto-detects, or pick it manually. Nothing is stored.

Why does it need a dictionary instead of a character table?

Because one Simplified character can map to several Traditional ones depending on the word: 发 → 髮 in 头发 (hair) but 发 → 發 in 发现 (discover). Character-by-character converters get these wrong; this tool converts whole dictionary words first, then falls back to the most common mapping only for leftover characters.

Does it translate the text into English?

No — script conversion changes how the characters are written, not what they mean. The text stays Chinese. For a word-by-word English translation with pinyin, use the Chinese Translator.

How do I know which characters were changed?

Changed characters are highlighted, and hovering (or tapping) a highlighted word shows the original form. Most everyday characters are identical in both scripts and pass through untouched. Characters converted by the Azure AI fallback (rather than our dictionary) additionally carry a small cloud icon , just like AI-translated words on our translator pages.