Tamil Unicode Converter
Paste Tamil text from any old document, or open the Word file. The converter works out which font it was typed in and gives you Unicode Tamil.
| Font in the file | Text as stored | Convert to Unicode |
|---|
Preview
Try¾Á¢ú ±í¸û ¯Â¢÷தமிழ் எங்கள் உயிர்
Short answer
Tamil that shows as English letters (jkpo;) or accented symbols (¾Á¢ú) was typed in a legacy font such as Bamini, TSCII, TAB or TAM. Paste it above, leave From on Detect, and you get Unicode Tamil. For a Word file, open the .docx: the converter finds the legacy fonts inside and gives you a converted copy with the formatting kept.
Diagnose
What Your Broken Tamil Text Is Telling You
Garbled Tamil has a handful of causes, and each one looks different. Find the row that matches what you see. The first two are font problems. The third is an encoding mix-up that the converter can also repair. The last two need a fix outside the converter.
| You see | Example | Cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| English letters with semicolons | jkpo; vq;fs; capu; | Typed in the Bamini font | Paste it above. Detection picks Bamini. |
| Accented letters and symbols | ¾Á¢ú ±í¸û ¯Â¢÷ | TSCII, from an older website, e-mail or e-book | Paste it above. Detection picks TSCII. |
| Accented letters with ¢ after many of them | îñ¤ö¢ âé¢è÷¢ àò¤ó¢ | TAB, the TamilNet99 bilingual standard, common in Tamil Nadu office files | Paste it above. Detection picks TAB. |
| Accented letters mixed with capitals and ‹ › ˜ | îI› âƒèœ àJ˜ | TAM, the TamilNet99 Tamil-only standard, used for print and DTP | Paste it above. Detection picks TAM. |
| ஠repeated over and over | தமிழ௠| Unicode saved as UTF-8 but opened as a Western encoding | Not a font problem. Paste it above and the converter repairs it, or reopen the file as UTF-8. |
| Empty boxes | □□□□ | Unicode Tamil, but no Tamil font on the device | Choose a Tamil font: Nirmala UI on Windows, or install Noto Sans Tamil. |
| Question marks | ????? | The letters were replaced when the file was saved | The text is lost. Go back to an earlier copy of the file. |
How detection works
Reading the Clues in the Characters
Every encoding leaves fingerprints. Unicode Tamil uses its own block of codes, so it is recognised at once and left as it is.
TSCII was a shared 8-bit standard. It keeps English in the normal places and puts Tamil in the codes above 127. On a modern system those codes show up as accented letters and symbols: தமிழ் becomes ¾Á¢ú. When most of the text is made of these characters, it is one of the 8-bit encodings.
TAB and TAM, the two encodings Tamil Nadu standardised in 1999, look much the same, so the converter reads the text as TSCII, TAB and TAM in turn and counts spellings real Tamil never has: a vowel sign with no letter before it, a vowel letter in the middle of a word, a Tamil digit inside a word. The reading with the fewest problems wins. TAB writes the dot as a separate ¢ (îñ¤ö¢), while TAM uses ready-made shapes, some of them in the English letter slots (îI›), which is how the two are told apart. A word of one or two letters can fit more than one reading, so for very short text check the From font.
Bamini is harder, because it uses ordinary English letters. The giveaways are patterns English never has: a semicolon stuck to a letter for the Tamil dot (tzf;fk;), capitals in the middle of a word for u and uu forms (nfhOk;G), and symbols like = or ] inside words. Real English has short common words such as the, and and is, which Bamini text almost never produces. The converter weighs those clues word by word.
If the text looks like plain English with no clear signs, the converter says it is guessing Bamini rather than pretending to be sure. You can always set From yourself.
Step by step
From an Old File to Unicode Tamil
- Copy the garbled text from the document, web page or e-mail. For a saved text file or a Word .docx, use Open file instead. Older Windows text files are read correctly too, and a .docx is converted with its formatting kept.
- Paste it in the left box. The font the converter detected appears next to From.
- Read a line of the Unicode on the right. If it is wrong, change From to the other font.
- Press Copy or Download .txt. Paste into your document and set a Unicode Tamil font such as Nirmala UI, Tamil Sangam MN or Noto Sans Tamil.
Moving a whole archive? Convert one file first and proofread it before doing the rest. Old documents sometimes mix fonts, for example Bamini for body text and an English font for names, and those mixed parts need a quick manual check. For details on each font, see Bamini to Unicode or the Tamil font converter overview.
Questions People Ask
What is a Tamil Unicode converter?
This tool rewrites supported legacy Tamil encodings as Unicode Tamil rather than translating the language. Paste text from an old document, inspect the source detection and compare the output. For writing new Tamil from English-letter input, use our typing editor instead of treating English words as legacy font text.
How does the converter know which font my text uses?
It inspects the characters and tests supported encodings, then shows a guess in the From menu. Several fonts share character positions, so the result can be ambiguous. Use a few representative lines and compare the output with the original rather than treating the first detected name as proof.
The detection is wrong. What do I do?
Choose the known source encoding manually under From, then compare the result again. Short strings and passages containing mostly English can mislead detection. Look at the font name in the original document when possible, and try a longer extract containing different Tamil letters before deciding that the mapping is faulty.
Why does detection say Bamini or Vanavil rather than one font?
Those mappings share some character sequences, so the available extract may not distinguish them. Check the original font name or paste a longer passage containing different letters. If you know the source is Vanavil, select it manually; the Vanavil converter explains the verified Avvaiyar scope.
Can this tool repair Tamil opened with the wrong UTF-8 encoding?
It attempts repair when detection recognises Unicode UTF-8 bytes that were interpreted as Windows-1252. Inspect the repair note and compare the result. If bytes have already been lost or replaced, reopen the original file using the correct encoding; the converter cannot recover information absent from the text.
Which legacy Tamil encodings does detection support?
The tool handles Bamini, Vanavil, TSCII, TAB and TAM alongside Unicode and recognisable mojibake. That does not mean it supports every font carrying a Tamil name. For the full conversion choices and document workflow, see the font converter hub; identify unsupported encodings before trying a substitute.
What if the tool says my text is already Unicode?
Leave it as Unicode if the characters are correct; no legacy conversion is needed. If it still looks wrong in a particular app, follow the display troubleshooting guide. A font or shaping issue can remain even when the stored text is valid Unicode Tamil.
Should I paste a single word to identify an unknown Tamil font?
Use a longer, representative passage when possible, because one word can contain only character positions shared by several encodings. Include the problem characters and compare known words in the output. Keep the original font name or a screenshot nearby so you have evidence beyond the automatic guess.
Can detection separate several legacy fonts mixed into one pasted paragraph?
Do not rely on one detection choice to resolve a paragraph containing multiple encodings. The text box applies one source mapping to its input. Convert each known section separately, or use the original DOCX workflow to select font runs while preserving the distinctions that plain pasted text loses.
Does detecting an encoding upload my text or file?
No, detection and conversion run in the browser on your device. The text converter can remember pasted input locally, so clear it on a shared computer after you finish. Save the original and checked Unicode result separately; browser storage is convenient for returning to work but is not a document backup.