Kanji Translator

Use Kanji Translator to translate English to Japanese kanji and back, with hiragana and romaji for phrases you select or type.

Kanji Translator turns English into Japanese and Japanese into English, then shows how every word is read. Select text on a page, press Alt+Shift+K, and a card opens next to it with the translation, the hiragana reading and the romaji. How to use it 1. Select English or Japanese text on a web page. 2. Press Alt+Shift+K (⌥⇧K on a Mac) or right-click and choose "Translate with Kanji Translator". 3. Copy the line you need from the card. 4. Nothing to select? Click the Kanji Translator icon, type up to 500 characters and press Translate. What you get ✅ The translation, in Japanese or in English ✅ The reading in hiragana and the romaji ✅ Up to three English meanings for every kanji From English to Japanese Type a sentence in the popup to go from English to Japanese characters, with the reading underneath. From English to kanji, the translation follows meaning, not sound: you get real Japanese words, not a transliteration. Under the result, a grid lists the kanji in it, so you can check each kanji meaning before you use it. Need to translate English to Japanese kanji for a message or a business card? Check the reading first: every English to kanji translation comes with it, since the characters alone don't tell you how to say a word. For English to romanized Japanese, copy just the Romaji line, written in Hepburn. Need just the hiragana? Type a word and copy the Reading line. From Japanese to English You usually need a Japanese kanji translator the moment a product page or forum thread stops making sense: select the line, press Alt+Shift+K and read the English on top. Japanese to romaji conversion runs in your browser, so the reading appears before the English does. To translate kanji to English from your own notes, paste them into the popup. Kanji in this text A word-by-word translation of kanji rarely works, so the selection is translated as a whole and the characters get their own grid. ➤ Most kanji translate into more than one English word, so a row lists up to three meanings. ➤ Every row also shows the word the character came from and its reading. ➤ Every kanji meaning comes from KANJIDIC; characters missing there get a dash. ➤ It isn't a full kanji dictionary, but it saves you a kanji lookup in another tab. Readings come from a dictionary, so names, rare words and words with two readings can come out wrong. To translate kanji to hiragana for one word, select just that word and copy the Reading line. To go from kanji to romaji, copy the Romaji line instead. Where it works - Kanji Translator works on most web pages, including tabs opened before you installed it. - Google Docs and canvas apps hide the selection, so you'll paste the text into the popup. - To convert Japanese characters to English in a PDF, right-click the selection: the text waits in the popup and is translated as soon as you open it. - No OCR for images or manga, no drawing input, no history. - English and Japanese only; Chinese isn't supported. Limits Kanji Translator takes up to 500 characters at a time; a longer selection is cut to the first 500, with a note. Every install gets 3,000 characters of translation a day, reset at local midnight; readings, romaji and the grid for Japanese text don't count. Installs on one network, such as an office or a VPN, share 15,000 a day. If the shared daily capacity runs out, translation pauses for everyone until midnight UTC. Expect 2 to 4 seconds for a short phrase and up to about 8 for the full 500. Privacy and permissions ▸ Only the text you translate leaves your browser. Translation is done by an AI language model through our own server. ▸ Our server in between doesn't log or store the text; for the daily limit it keeps only a salted IP hash and a character count until the next day's first translation. ▸ Kanji Translator needs no account and has no analytics, user IDs or cookies. ▸ Permissions: context menu, storage, scripting and http/https page access for the card, offscreen for the reading analyzer. ▸ No new tab page, no home page changes, nothing runs until you ask. Questions and answers Can I type instead of selecting? Yes. Type or paste English or Japanese into the popup and press Translate. Can I change the shortcut? Yes. Open chrome://extensions/shortcuts and set your own. How good is the translation? It's done by an AI language model, so it can miss nuance, names or slang. Double-check anything you'll print, sign or send. Kanji meanings from KANJIDIC, © Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, CC BY-SA 4.0. This extension is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google LLC. Google, Chrome and Chrome Web Store are trademarks of Google LLC.