The IPA ↔ SAMPA converter translates phonetic transcriptions between IPA Unicode symbols and the ASCII-only SAMPA / X-SAMPA encoding. SAMPA was created so phoneticians could type and exchange transcriptions on systems that lacked IPA fonts, mapping each IPA symbol to one or more ordinary keyboard characters. This tool runs the mapping both ways, instantly and locally.
How it works
The converter holds a two-column lookup table pairing each IPA symbol with its X-SAMPA equivalent — for example IPA ʃ ↔ SAMPA S, ŋ ↔ N, θ ↔ T, ð ↔ D, and the schwa ə ↔ @. When converting IPA to SAMPA the input is scanned character by character and each IPA glyph is replaced by its ASCII code. Going the other way, SAMPA is matched longest-token-first so multi-character codes are handled before single letters.
Any character with no table entry — ordinary Latin letters that already match (like p, t, k), stress marks ˈ, spaces or brackets — is passed through unchanged so the surrounding transcription stays intact.
Example
The English word “ship” transcribed in IPA as ʃɪp becomes the SAMPA string SIp. The word “thing” θɪŋ becomes TIN. Going back, typing D@ returns ðə (“the”). Because Latin letters such as p, b, m, f are identical in both systems, words built from common consonants often look almost the same in either notation.
Notes
X-SAMPA uses uppercase letters and punctuation to stand in for non-Latin IPA glyphs, so case matters: S means ʃ while s means s. Keep that in mind when typing SAMPA by hand. Everything runs locally — your transcription is never uploaded.