Is the Tongan document translator free?

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 or photographed Tongan documents?

Yes. Upload a JPG, PNG or HEIC photo or a scanned PDF and the text is recognized before it is translated. Printed programmes and typed letters come through well when the image is sharp, flat and evenly lit. The fakauʻa and macrons are small and are the first things a poor scan loses, and many originals never had them, so the translation has to infer them from context; check names of people, villages and churches against the original. Handwriting varies a lot: neat block letters usually work, cursive and faded ink do not reliably.

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

Tongan is a smaller language for machine translation than English or Spanish, so accuracy is good on everyday and church material and weaker on formal speech and legal text. Fast gives a reliable gist of a programme, notice or letter. Advanced runs a frontier model and does better where Tongan is subtle: telling the two kinds of possession apart (ʻeku and hoku), reading sentences typed without diacritics, recognizing chiefly and royal vocabulary, and keeping a formal register consistent when translating into Tongan. Use Advanced for land and court papers, speeches and anything you will submit or read aloud, and have a Tongan speaker review translations into Tongan.

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. Tongan usually runs longer than English, so headings, programme columns and form fields in a file translated into Tongan are the places to check first.

Can I use this for Immigration New Zealand, Home Affairs or USCIS?

Not on its own. Each has its own rule for translations of non-English documents, generally a translation from a recognized or certified translator with a signed statement, which this output does not include. Tongan courts and the land office likewise expect a translator they recognize. Translate here first to understand the document and to give the certifying translator an accurate draft, then arrange certification for the pages that need it.

Is there more than one kind of Tongan?

Tongan is one language across Tongatapu, Haʻapai and Vavaʻu with only minor regional variation, and the same Tongan is written in Auckland or Utah. The variation that matters in documents is register and era: the chiefly and royal levels of speech, the older spelling in pre-1943 texts and some church books, and the amount of English mixed into diaspora writing. Niuean and Samoan are related but separate languages, not dialects of Tongan.

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. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

Tongan PDF & Document Translator — English ↔ Tongan

Translate English to Tongan or Tongan 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 Tongan documents come out

Translate a Tongan (lea fakatonga) PDF, Word document or scanned page into English, or an English file into Tongan. Upload church programmes and hymn sheets, letters, Tongan government or land papers, school notices and family documents, or a photo of a printed page, and download a translated file that keeps the original layout. Families in the Tongan diaspora in New Zealand, Australia and the United States use it to read papers sent from home; churches, schools and community groups use it to put English material into Tongan. It is not a certified translation.

Tongan is written in a compact Latin alphabet: five vowels and twelve consonants, counting the digraph ng and the fakauʻa (ʻ), a letter in its own right that writes the glottal stop; vowel length is written with the toloi, a macron (ā ē ī ō ū). The spelling was fixed by Tonga's Privy Council in 1943, and both the fakauʻa and the toloi change words: tau (we, or a fight) is not taʻu (year), and vowel length does the same. On paper, the marks are the problem. Typewriters and early computer fonts had no fakauʻa or macron, so decades of church bulletins, letters, newspapers and government notices either leave them out or write the glottal stop with an ordinary apostrophe, a curly quotation mark or an opening single quotation mark; the correct character is the modifier letter turned comma, the same one Hawaiian uses for the ʻokina, and mixed usage inside one document is normal. Older texts, including the nineteenth-century Wesleyan Bible translation still read in many churches, and some hymnals, predate the standard and spell words differently. Some grammars and dictionaries mark the definitive accent (a stress shift onto a final vowel) with an acute accent; ordinary writing does not. Tongan usually runs longer than English, so a translated page or table cell needs more room, and the layout adjusts type size and line breaks to fit.

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 Tongan

Church programmes, hymns and scripture

Church life produces most of the Tongan-language paper in circulation: orders of service, funeral and memorial programmes, hymn sheets (himi), Sunday school material, Fakamē children's-day programmes, misinale announcements and sermons, across the Free Wesleyan Church, the Free Church of Tonga, the Church of Tonga, Catholic parishes and a large Latter-day Saint membership. Diaspora congregations translate in both directions: an English lesson or notice into Tongan for elders, a Tongan programme into English for a mixed congregation or a non-Tongan spouse. Hymn and scripture wording is fixed by tradition, so a fresh translation of a familiar verse will read differently from the version people sing; use the output for meaning and keep the known wording for worship.

Land, court and government papers from Tonga

Tongans overseas often need to read documents from home: a Deed of Grant or lease for a tax allotment (ʻapi tukuhau) or town allotment (ʻapi kolo), Ministry of Lands correspondence, court summonses and judgments, birth, marriage and death certificates, and letters from a town officer or the Legislative Assembly (Fale Alea). Tonga's government and courts work in both Tongan and English, so a file is often bilingual or mixed, and the Tongan parts may be typed without diacritics. Upload the scan and read it in English with the layout kept. This is not a certified translation: for anything filed with a court, a land office or an immigration authority, have the translation done or checked by a qualified translator.

Immigration and family documents in New Zealand, Australia and the US

Auckland, Sydney, Salt Lake City and the San Francisco Bay Area hold large Tongan communities, and visa, residence and citizenship files (including New Zealand's Pacific Access Category ballot) call for English versions of Tongan certificates, police clearances, letters of support from family or ministers, and statutory declarations. Immigration New Zealand, Australia's Department of Home Affairs and USCIS each require translations that meet their own certification rules, which the output here does not satisfy on its own. Use it to understand a document, check a translation you were given, or prepare an accurate draft for a certified translator, so that names, dates and village and district names are carried over exactly as written in the original.

Letters, speeches and family history

Letters between Tonga and the diaspora, wedding and birthday speeches, family genealogies (hohoko), memorial booklets and captioned photographs are the personal documents people bring here, often as phone photos of handwritten pages. Tongan has three levels of speech: ordinary language, the chiefly register used towards nobles and the royal register used of the King (to eat is kai, ʻilo or taumafa depending on whom you speak of). Formal letters and speeches lean on them heavily, along with honorific address and the poetic vocabulary of heliaki, indirect reference through imagery. A translation captures the plain meaning; the layers of respect and allusion in a formal speech need a Tongan reader to explain. Clear handwriting usually comes through; faded or cursive pages vary.

What to watch for in Tongan document translation

Tongan's traps are small marks and large registers. Without the fakauʻa and toloi many words collapse together, and because most typed Tongan omits them, the translator is often inferring from context whether a word is tau or taʻu, so a wrong guess produces a sentence that reads smoothly and means something else. Possession has two classes, and choosing ʻeku where hoku belongs, or the reverse, is a common error in translations into Tongan. The definitive accent is rarely written, so definiteness in English has to be reconstructed from context. Speech levels are the deepest issue: a funeral notice, a letter to a noble or anything about the royal family uses chiefly and royal vocabulary that a translation into English flattens to plain words, losing the respect they carry, while a translation into Tongan may miss them entirely and address a noble as a commoner. Formal Tongan is also rich in heliaki, indirect reference through imagery, and in proverbs that do not translate literally. Add English loanwords in Tongan spelling (komiti for committee, polisi for police), a particle-heavy sentence structure that becomes wordy English if kept word for word, and Tongan's longer running length in tables and forms, and the safe practice is clear: keep the original beside the output and have a Tongan speaker read anything formal.

Tongan document translation FAQ

Is the Tongan document translator free?: 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 or photographed Tongan documents?: Yes. Upload a JPG, PNG or HEIC photo or a scanned PDF and the text is recognized before it is translated. Printed programmes and typed letters come through well when the image is sharp, flat and evenly lit. The fakauʻa and macrons are small and are the first things a poor scan loses, and many originals never had them, so the translation has to infer them from context; check names of people, villages and churches against the original. Handwriting varies a lot: neat block letters usually work, cursive and faded ink do not reliably.
How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?: Tongan is a smaller language for machine translation than English or Spanish, so accuracy is good on everyday and church material and weaker on formal speech and legal text. Fast gives a reliable gist of a programme, notice or letter. Advanced runs a frontier model and does better where Tongan is subtle: telling the two kinds of possession apart (ʻeku and hoku), reading sentences typed without diacritics, recognizing chiefly and royal vocabulary, and keeping a formal register consistent when translating into Tongan. Use Advanced for land and court papers, speeches and anything you will submit or read aloud, and have a Tongan speaker review translations into Tongan.
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. Tongan usually runs longer than English, so headings, programme columns and form fields in a file translated into Tongan are the places to check first.
Can I use this for Immigration New Zealand, Home Affairs or USCIS?: Not on its own. Each has its own rule for translations of non-English documents, generally a translation from a recognized or certified translator with a signed statement, which this output does not include. Tongan courts and the land office likewise expect a translator they recognize. Translate here first to understand the document and to give the certifying translator an accurate draft, then arrange certification for the pages that need it.
Is there more than one kind of Tongan?: Tongan is one language across Tongatapu, Haʻapai and Vavaʻu with only minor regional variation, and the same Tongan is written in Auckland or Utah. The variation that matters in documents is register and era: the chiefly and royal levels of speech, the older spelling in pre-1943 texts and some church books, and the amount of English mixed into diaspora writing. Niuean and Samoan are related but separate languages, not dialects of Tongan.
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. 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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