Is it free to translate a Jawi document?

You can try it free, with no account needed, and signing in gives you a larger daily allowance. Pro and Scholar are there for longer documents and regular use.

Can it read scanned manuscripts, lithographed kitab and photographs of old documents?

Yes, upload a scanned PDF or a JPG, PNG or HEIC photo and the text is recognized before translation. Clean lithographs and modern print usually come through well. Manuscripts vary with the hand, the ink and the paper: a regular scribal naskh on a good scan gives usable text, while faded ink, show-through, tight interlinear glosses and marginal notes produce gaps or misplaced lines. Photograph pages flat, in even light, one opening at a time, and treat what comes back as a reading aid to check against the page.

How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?

Fast gives a rough sense of a page. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the tier for Jawi: it reads unwritten vowels from context, separates Malay from the Arabic quotations around it, knows classical vocabulary and royal register, and is far less likely to mistake the six Jawi letters for their Arabic look-alikes when the scan is clear. It is still a machine reading of a script with real ambiguity, so verify names, dates and any line you will cite.

Will the translation keep my document's original layout?

The translator produces a translated PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel or EPUB file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. Manuscript pages are read as images; marginal glosses and interlinear text may land in a different order from the original, so read them against the page.

Is this a scholarly edition, and can I use it for an official document?

No on both counts. For a hikayat or a kitab, the output is a reading translation; a published critical edition or a specialist's transcription remains the authority for citation. For an old land grant, a Bruneian official paper or a family document going into a legal matter, the authorities will want a certified translator, and this page is the way to find out what the document says first.

Old Jawi, modern Jawi, Pegon and Rumi: which is which?

All Jawi, old or new, goes through this page; the spelling differences between a seventeenth-century manuscript and a textbook in the 1986 standard are read from context. Arab-Melayu texts from Riau and Sumatra are Jawi under another name and belong here too. Pegon (Javanese, Sundanese and Madurese in Arabic letters) uses related conventions but is not Malay, so results vary and this page is not written for it. Rumi is Malay in Latin letters, the modern default in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei; to translate a Rumi document use the Malay page, and to turn a Jawi document into Rumi choose Malay as the target here.

What file types can I upload?

PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX (PowerPoint), XLSX (Excel) and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Most Jawi material arrives as library scans and phone photos, and those are read visually. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

Malay (Jawi) PDF & Document Translator — English ↔ Malay (Jawi)

Translate English to Malay (Jawi) or Malay (Jawi) to English while preserving your document’s layout. Upload your file, choose the target language, and get a natural translation that keeps the meaning of the original.

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See “Keep formatting” in action

Real examples of the “Keep formatting” option: original on the left, translated document on the right. Click either page to enlarge.

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A civil complaint filed in Mexico City, Spanish to English. Caption block, numbered pleadings, the evidence table and the signature block all keep their places. — Original — A civil complaint filed in Mexico City, Spanish to English. Caption block, numbered pleadings, the evidence table and the signature block all keep their places.

An Italian birth certificate, photographed rather than scanned. The framed masthead, the field grid, the marginal annotations and the round seal all hold their positions. — Original — An Italian birth certificate, photographed rather than scanned. The framed masthead, the field grid, the marginal annotations and the round seal all hold their positions.

A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact. — Original — A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact.

A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact. — Translation — A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact.

A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged. — Original — A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged.

A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged. — Translation — A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged.

A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register. — Original — A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register.

A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register. — Translation — A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register.

A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place. — Original — A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place.

A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place. — Translation — A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place.

How Malay (Jawi) documents come out

Upload a scanned Jawi manuscript page, a lithographed kitab, an old letter, a khutbah text or a photographed gravestone and read it in English, or choose Malay as the target to get a Rumi (Latin-script) rendering. Jawi is Malay written in Arabic letters, for centuries the everyday script of the Malay world, still official in Brunei and used in religious materials across Malaysia. Clean printed and lithographed pages usually come through well; manuscripts and handwriting vary.

Jawi uses the Arabic alphabet, written right to left, with six extra letters for sounds Arabic lacks: چ (ca), ڠ (nga), ڤ (pa), ݢ (ga), ۏ (va) and ڽ (nya). Arabic loanwords keep their Arabic spelling, native Malay words are spelled by convention, and the conventions changed over time: manuscripts and older kitab leave most vowels unwritten, Za'ba's mid-twentieth-century spelling wrote more of them, and the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka guidelines of 1986 (Pedoman Ejaan Jawi yang Disempurnakan) fixed the modern standard used in Malaysian schools and religious publishing. The letter for ga alone appears as ݢ, ڬ or ݣ depending on the printer. Many surviving texts are lithographs printed in Mecca, Cairo, Bombay, Singapore and Penang, in which an Arabic matn sits inside a Malay translation written between the lines or in the margins, so one page carries two languages in one script. Manuscripts add red-ink rubrication for headings and Arabic quotations, catchwords at the foot of each page, no punctuation and no paragraphing beyond discourse words like maka and syahdan, plus water damage and show-through. Modern Jawi PDFs have their own problem: a font without the six letters, or a text layer that stores them wrongly, so we read those pages visually. Dates are usually Hijri.

Translate your document and keep its structure

The translator keeps your file’s structure while translating the text in context. The downloaded format depends on the source file.

PDFs and scanned pages: The translated PDF follows the page visually, with translated pages rendered as images. Selectable PDF text and identical fonts are not guaranteed.
Word documents and PowerPoint presentations: Start with DOCX or PPTX when you have it. Native paragraphs, table text and slide text can stay editable in the corresponding file format. Translated text inside pictures remains image content; review text wrapping and font changes in your editor.
Excel workbooks and EPUB books: Use the original XLSX or unprotected EPUB for a translated workbook or ebook. Review formulas, numbers and text cells in a workbook; check chapter order, navigation and text flow in your ebook reader.

What people translate to and from Malay (Jawi)

Classical Malay manuscripts: hikayat, syair and chronicles

The Malay literary heritage is in Jawi: the Sulalatus Salatin (Sejarah Melayu), Hikayat Hang Tuah, Hikayat Abdullah, Raja Ali Haji's Tuhfat al-Nafis and Gurindam Dua Belas, and syair from Siti Zubaidah to countless local compositions, in copies held by the British Library, Leiden, the Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia, the National Library of Singapore and private families. Students and researchers upload digitized pages to read them. Classical vocabulary and royal register (baginda, titah, sembah, patik, beta) are what Advanced is for; the output is a reading translation, not a substitute for a scholarly edition, and cramped or damaged hands give partial results.

Kitab Jawi and religious materials

The kitab tradition, from al-Raniri's Sirat al-Mustaqim and al-Banjari's Sabil al-Muhtadin to the fiqh, tasawuf and tauhid texts lithographed for pondok and pesantren students, is Malay explanation wrapped around Arabic sources, and the same mix continues in Friday khutbah texts issued by state religious departments, KAFA and sekolah agama textbooks, mosque notices, doa booklets and some wedding cards. The trap on every page is the boundary between Arabic quotation and Malay commentary: an Arabic-first tool turns the Malay into gibberish. Use Advanced, and check first that the boundaries fell in the right places and that Qur'anic and hadith quotations were treated as quotations.

Letters, treaties, deeds and family papers

Malay rulers and merchants wrote to each other and to European officials in Jawi for centuries: letters opening with formal compliments and stamped with a seal (cap), treaties (the 1874 Pangkor Engagement had a Jawi text), land grants, receipts and contracts, and later the letters, certificates and marriage documents that families in Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Riau and Patani still keep. Gravestones carry Jawi names and Hijri dates. Genealogists photograph these and upload them; formal secretarial hands and crisply carved stone read reasonably, quick personal hands vary a lot, and seals are worth reading separately. Confirm names and dates before they go into a family tree.

Modern Jawi and conversion to Rumi

Jawi remains a working script: co-official in Brunei on letterheads, signage and banknotes, current in Kelantan and Terengganu, and archived in the Utusan Melayu, which printed in Jawi from 1939 into the 2000s. If your reader knows Malay but not Jawi, choose Malay as the target and you get the document in Rumi. That is produced by translation rather than letter-by-letter transliteration, so spelling follows modern Rumi and old forms are modernized; if you need the original orthography preserved, compare the result against the page. English output works the same way for readers outside the Malay world.

Malay (Rumi) documents

What to watch for in Malay (Jawi) document translation

Jawi's difficulties are mostly about ambiguity. Vowels are unwritten in older texts, so a short word can be read several ways and only the sentence decides; a tool that guesses word by word produces fluent nonsense. The six Jawi letters differ from Arabic letters by dots alone, so on a poor scan ڤ becomes ف, ݢ becomes ک and ڽ becomes ن, and a Malay word turns into a nonexistent Arabic one. Arabic and Malay share the page: Qur'anic quotations, hadith, Arabic headings and loanwords sit inside Malay prose, and the wrong boundary either translates the Arabic as if it were Malay or leaves Malay untranslated as if it were Arabic. Classical discourse words (maka, syahdan, hatta, arakian, alkisah) are structure rather than content and should not become a literal 'then' and 'so' in every sentence, while royal register (baginda, titah, patik, beta) encodes rank that a flat English pronoun loses. Names and place names in old spelling, Hijri dates, and titles (Sultan, Tengku, Raja, Tuan, Haji) need carrying over, not translating. Modern material adds the reverse problem, Rumi and English fragments inside a Jawi page. The safe practice is Advanced, then a reader who knows the text type for anything that will be cited.

Malay (Jawi) document translation FAQ

Is it free to translate a Jawi document?: You can try it free, with no account needed, and signing in gives you a larger daily allowance. Pro and Scholar are there for longer documents and regular use.
Can it read scanned manuscripts, lithographed kitab and photographs of old documents?: Yes, upload a scanned PDF or a JPG, PNG or HEIC photo and the text is recognized before translation. Clean lithographs and modern print usually come through well. Manuscripts vary with the hand, the ink and the paper: a regular scribal naskh on a good scan gives usable text, while faded ink, show-through, tight interlinear glosses and marginal notes produce gaps or misplaced lines. Photograph pages flat, in even light, one opening at a time, and treat what comes back as a reading aid to check against the page.
How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?: Fast gives a rough sense of a page. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the tier for Jawi: it reads unwritten vowels from context, separates Malay from the Arabic quotations around it, knows classical vocabulary and royal register, and is far less likely to mistake the six Jawi letters for their Arabic look-alikes when the scan is clear. It is still a machine reading of a script with real ambiguity, so verify names, dates and any line you will cite.
Will the translation keep my document's original layout?: The translator produces a translated PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel or EPUB file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. Manuscript pages are read as images; marginal glosses and interlinear text may land in a different order from the original, so read them against the page.
Is this a scholarly edition, and can I use it for an official document?: No on both counts. For a hikayat or a kitab, the output is a reading translation; a published critical edition or a specialist's transcription remains the authority for citation. For an old land grant, a Bruneian official paper or a family document going into a legal matter, the authorities will want a certified translator, and this page is the way to find out what the document says first.
Old Jawi, modern Jawi, Pegon and Rumi: which is which?: All Jawi, old or new, goes through this page; the spelling differences between a seventeenth-century manuscript and a textbook in the 1986 standard are read from context. Arab-Melayu texts from Riau and Sumatra are Jawi under another name and belong here too. Pegon (Javanese, Sundanese and Madurese in Arabic letters) uses related conventions but is not Malay, so results vary and this page is not written for it. Rumi is Malay in Latin letters, the modern default in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei; to translate a Rumi document use the Malay page, and to turn a Jawi document into Rumi choose Malay as the target here.
What file types can I upload?: PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX (PowerPoint), XLSX (Excel) and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Most Jawi material arrives as library scans and phone photos, and those are read visually. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

See “Keep formatting” in action

Real examples of the “Keep formatting” option: original on the left, translated document on the right. Click either page to enlarge.

1 / 6

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