Morse Code to English Translator

How to translate Morse code to English

Decoding Morse is a matter of splitting it correctly. Each group of dots and dashes between spaces is one letter or digit; each slash is the end of a word. The translator above reads ., - and /, but it also accepts what people actually paste: typographic dots (·, •), en and em dashes (–, —), underscores for dashes, a vertical bar for the word break, and two or more spaces instead of a slash. Anything it cannot match becomes a ? in the output so you can see exactly where the message went wrong instead of getting silence.

When the Morse is arriving as sound rather than text - a recording, a radio, a phone held up to the screen, a video - the Listen button turns the microphone into the decoder. It watches the 400-1100 Hz band where Morse tones sit, times each tone and each silence, writes dots, dashes and gaps into the box as they arrive, and the English follows in the right-hand panel. Set the Speed slider near the sender's speed so the first few letters are read correctly; after that the decoder adapts to the sender's own timing.

Nothing leaves your browser: the decoding, the audio analysis and the copy all happen on this page. Press Play to hear the Morse you pasted read back, which is the quickest way to check a transcription.

What to know about decoding Morse

• One space separates letters, a slash (or a wide gap) separates words. .... .. is HI; .... / .. is H I as two words.
• There is no case in Morse. The decoder writes capitals; "hello" and "HELLO" are the same code.
• A ? in the output marks a group that is not in the table - usually a missing space that fused two letters, or one symbol too many.
• Digits are always five symbols and letters never more than four, so .---- is 1 while .--- is J.
• By ear, dashes are three times as long as dots and the gap between words is seven units. A recording that sounds evenly spaced is being sent at a slow, teaching speed.

Decoding examples

Why a decode comes out wrong

• Missing spaces between letters. .... is H but .. .. is II - the gap is part of the code, and a transcription that drops it cannot be recovered.
• Marking word breaks with a single space. The decoder then reads the whole line as one long word; use a slash or a double space.
• Counting the beeps instead of timing them. A dash is not "a dot that lasts a bit longer" - it is exactly three dots long, and a hurried transcription that guesses gets ?s.
• Listening with the wrong speed set. The microphone decoder starts from the Speed slider; if the sender is at 25 WPM and the slider at 8, the first few dashes are read as dots until it catches up.

Morse code to English FAQ