Braille to English Translator

Paste UEB braille in Unicode or NABCC ASCII, choose Grade 1 or Grade 2, and read the English back. The same liblouis 3.39.0 engine powers theEnglish ⇄ braille translator on the homepage—this page starts in the reverse direction.

Convert braille → English

Direction

UEB grade

Current standard: UEB in the US since 2016; the UK and Australia have also unified on UEB. Match the grade that produced the braille you pasted.

Braille input charset

UEB braille (Unicode or ASCII)

Choose whether the paste is Unicode or ASCII. ASCII uses the six-dot NABCC subset with lowercase letters. Maximum: 5,000 Unicode code points per run.

0 / 5,000 Unicode code points

Ready. The engine loads locally in your browser on first Convert.

Convert to see English plus Unicode, dot patterns and NABCC ASCII for the cells you pasted.

English result

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Unicode braille

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Dot patterns / numbers 1–6

Unicode cells show the pattern; numbers name raised dots. 0 = blank cell.

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ASCII braille

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Engine: liblouis 3.39.0 · en-ueb-g1.ctb · text_nabcc.dis. Round-trip match ≠ correctness. Learning and self-check only.

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How braille to English works here

Select Braille → English (already selected on this page) and UEB Grade 1 or UEB Grade 2 to match your source.
Choose Unicode or ASCII charset to match what you pasted.
Convert, then copy the English result or download a UTF-8 TXT with all views.

Need English → braille or Grade comparisons? Use thebraille translator. Looking up a single cell? Open the UEB braille alphabet.

Example (engine output)

Grade 1 Unicode for “You can go now.” from this site’s tables:

Braille (Unicode): ⠠⠽⠕⠥⠀⠉⠁⠝⠀⠛⠕⠀⠝⠕⠺⠲

English back: You can go now.

Paste that Unicode line above, keep Grade 1 and Unicode charset, then Convert to reproduce it yourself.

Limits for reverse conversion

Bidirectional boundary. Forward (English → braille) on this engine uses UEB tables. Reverse (braille → English) expands contractions where it can, but that step can be ambiguous: the tables include non-reversible rules, so fluent English back is a check against the cells—not proof of a unique decode.
Literary UEB only; six-dot cells; 5,000 code points max.
UEB Grade 2 back-translation can look fluent and still be context-wrong—treat it as a check, not certification.
No OCR from photos or PDFs. Type or paste braille text only.

Full engine notes and contraction examples live on thehomepage Engine & limits section. Unknown cells: look them up on the UEB braille alphabet.