NATO Phonetic Alphabet Translator

Our NATO phonetic alphabet translator allows you to convert plain text into standardized NATO code words instantly. In this article, you’ll discover:

• What the NATO phonetic alphabet is;
• How to make a NATO phonetic alphabet to English translation;
• How to use the NATO phonetics alphabet translator;
• Answers to questions like “What is P in NATO phonetic alphabet” or “What is the law enforcement phonetic alphabet”; and finally
• An easy-to-read NATO phonetic alphabet chart.

If you are already familiar with systems such as Morse code, you will notice that the NATO phonetic alphabet serves a similar purpose, i.e., to ensure unambiguous communication. Keep reading to learn more about it!

First, the NATO phonetic alphabet is not actually a true phonetic alphabet, unlike the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Instead, it is a spelling alphabet, specifically an orthographic system designed for consistent spelling rather than perfect pronunciation. Its official name is the International Radio-Telephony Spelling Alphabet.

If you watch thrillers or war movies, you might think it’s the alphabet used by pilots. Indeed, it is also sometimes referred to as the aviation alphabet or the military phonetic alphabet. However, its roots lie in pre-World War I alphabets designed to improve communication over poor-quality long-distance telephone circuits. You can learn more about the history with our article entitled “NATO Alphabet History”.

To use the NATO phonetic alphabet translator is pretty straightforward — follow these steps:

1. Choose the translation direction:
   • Text → NATO phonetic alphabet: If you want to spell something out clearly.
   • NATO phonetic alphabet → Text: If you want to convert NATO phonetic alphabet code words back into normal writing.
2. Enter your input in the correct format:
   • If you choose Text → NATO:
     • Type any text you want (letters and numbers).
     • Letters (A–Z) and digits (0–9) will be converted automatically.
     • Spaces are displayed as (space).
     • A period (.) is translated as Stop.
   • If you choose NATO → Text:
     • Type NATO phonetic letters separated by spaces (example: Hotel Echo Lima Lima Oscar).
     • Use (space) wherever you want an actual space in the output.
     • Use Stop to represent a period (.).
3. The result appears immediately below the input.

Even without a NATO phonetic alphabet translator, converting the NATO phonetic alphabet into standard English is pretty easy. You only need to identify each NATO code word and match it to the corresponding letter. For example:

• Hotel → H;
• Echo → E; and
• Zulu → Z.

When these letters are combined in order, they reconstruct the original word or phrase. You can check out our NATO phonetic alphabet chart in the section below for a bit of help. Once you have taken care of the spoken or written NATO phonetic letters, you may want to focus on spacing and punctuation. For instance, you can use (space) for, without surprise, a space, which indicates a separation between words. Likewise, Stop represents a period (.) at the end of a sentence.

Try out our NATO phonetic alphabet translator, which easily recognizes standard NATO phonetic alphabet-coded words for you and converts them into readable English. If you’re interested in secret codes and languages, you might want to check out our Vigenère cipher calculator and Pig Latin translator.

To encode a message using the NATO phonetic alphabet, replace each letter of the word to be spelled with the corresponding word in the phonetic alphabet. The NATO correspondence table (ICAO — International Civil Aviation Organization — code words stable since 1956) is:

Sometimes, you’ll find the term niner for 9 instead of nine. Do you want to know why? Check our other article “Why do people say niner instead of nine?”.