What is the SBL transliteration scheme?

It is the romanization defined in the Society of Biblical Literature Handbook of Style, the standard for academic publishing in Biblical studies. The General-Purpose form uses readable diacritics such as ḥ, ṭ, ṣ, š, and ā to mark distinct Hebrew sounds.

How does the simplified scheme differ?

The simplified scheme outputs only plain ASCII, mapping ח to ch, ש to sh, צ to ts, and rendering long and short vowels with the same base letter. It is ideal for URLs, filenames, search indexes, and systems that cannot display diacritics.

Does it tell shin from sin?

Yes, when the dot is present. A shin dot (U+05C1) on the letter ש produces š (or sh), while a sin dot (U+05C2) produces ś (or s). Without a dot the tool defaults to shin, since unpointed text does not mark the distinction.

Is this a phonetic transcription?

No. It is a deterministic letter-by-letter transliteration, not a pronunciation guide. It does not resolve begadkefat softening (bet to v), the quality of shva, or matres lectionis, which depend on grammatical context rather than the written letters alone.

Does my text stay private?

Yes. The mapping runs entirely in your browser. No text is uploaded, so unpublished translations and research notes remain on your own device.

Hebrew to Latin Transliteration

Email me this result

Get this tool's output sent to your inbox, plus one useful tool a week. No spam, unsubscribe any time.

This tool romanizes Hebrew into Latin script using either the scholarly SBL General-Purpose scheme or a plain-ASCII simplified scheme, mapping each consonant and vowel point to its standard Latin equivalent.

How it works

The text is processed code point by code point. Each consonant maps to a Latin letter — for example ח to ḥ, ט to ṭ, צ to ṣ, and ק to q in the SBL scheme. The letter ש is resolved using its diacritic dot: a shin dot yields š and a sin dot yields ś, with the tool looking ahead past any intervening vowel to find the dot. Nikud vowels map to their SBL values (ā for qamats, ē for tsere, i for hiriq, and so on), while dagesh, rafe, and cantillation marks are skipped. The simplified scheme swaps every diacritic letter for an ASCII digraph and collapses vowel-length distinctions:

SBL:        שָׁלוֹם -> šālwōm        יִשְׂרָאֵל -> yiśrāʾēl
Simplified: שָׁלוֹם -> shalvom       יִשְׂרָאֵל -> yisra'el

Example and notes

Transliteration is deterministic and reversible at the letter level, which is exactly what academic citation needs — but it is not a pronunciation guide. It will not soften ב to v after a vowel (begadkefat), decide whether a shva is vocal or silent, or treat ו and י as vowel letters, because those depend on grammar rather than the written form. For a faithful scholarly result, supply fully pointed text so the vowels and the shin/sin dots are present; for slugs and search keys, use the simplified scheme to get clean ASCII output.