Morse Code Translator with Audio

How to use the Morse code translator

Type in either box. Text turns into Morse code as you type, and Morse code typed or pasted into the right-hand box turns back into text. Press Play to hear it, tick Flash a light to see it, and use Download WAV to save the sound. Click any character in the chart to hear it on its own. Speed, tone, separators and dot and dash symbols are all adjustable.

Writing Morse code by hand

Use . for a dot and - for a dash (· • − ▬ and _ work too). Put one space between letters and / or | between words; a gap of two or more spaces also counts as a word break, and line breaks are kept. Letters and words need different separators, so picking one that clashes changes the other. Codes that are not Morse show as #. Prosigns, which are sent as one signal without letter gaps, go in angle brackets: <SOS>, <AR>, <SK>.

Timing and words per minute

Speed is measured with the word PARIS, which takes exactly 50 units including the gap after it. At w words per minute one unit therefore lasts 1200 ÷ w milliseconds: 60 ms at 20 WPM, 100 ms at 12 WPM. The timing line under the controls shows every length for your settings.

Farnsworth spacing

Farnsworth timing sends each character at the full character speed but stretches the gaps between letters and words, so the overall speed is lower. Learners hear every letter as a rhythm instead of counting dots. The page uses the formula from the ARRL’s Farnsworth timing standard. With character speed c and overall speed s, the gaps in each 50-unit word add up to (60c − 37.2s) ÷ (s × c) seconds: 3/19 of that for each of the four gaps between letters and 7/19 for the gap between words. At 20 WPM characters and 10 WPM overall, a letter gap is 654 ms and a word gap 1,525 ms.

The ITU standard and extras

The code follows ITU-R M.1677-1: the letters A to Z plus É, the digits, and the signs . , : ? ' - / ( ) " = + × @. It also defines service signals, which the translator writes as prosigns: understood ...-. <SN>, error ........ <HH>, wait .-... <AS>, end of work ...-.- <SK>, and starting signal -.-.- <KA>. The ITU has no code for % or ‰: they are sent as 0/0 and 0/00, joined to a number by a hyphen, so 2% becomes 2-0/0 rather than 20/0. A fraction such as ½ is sent as 1/2, also joined by a hyphen (4½ becomes 4-1/2). The minute sign ′ is an apostrophe and the second sign ″ two apostrophes, and the multiplication sign × is the same code as X.

Signs such as ! & ; $ _ and letters like Ä, Ñ, Ö and Ü are not in the ITU standard but are widely used; they are marked with an asterisk in the chart. Untick Common non-ITU signs to leave them out. Æ and Ø share the codes of Ä and Ö, or become AE and O when those signs are off. Other accented letters are sent as their base letter, so ô becomes O, and ß and Œ become SS and OE.

SOS

The distress signal is sent as one continuous sequence, ...---..., with no gaps between the letters. Type <SOS> to get that form. Typing SOS gives the three separate letters ... --- ..., which any listener will still recognize.