Martian Text Converter

Features

• Both directions: plain Chinese to Martian text, and Martian text back
• Direction can be detected automatically, by counting matches on each side
• 159 common spellings: homophones, lookalike characters, rare variants, Bopomofo and circled digits
• Whole words take priority over single characters, so 喜欢, 什么 and 朋友 convert as units
• Anything not in the table passes through unchanged — nothing is dropped or altered
• When nothing matches at all, the input is returned as-is rather than raising an error
• Round-trips: words the table covers survive a conversion and a reversal intact
• Updates as you type and copies in one go
• Everything runs locally in the browser; your text is never uploaded

How to use

1. Paste the text
2. The direction usually needs no choosing — it is detected
3. Pick one manually if you want to force it

FAQ

Why were some characters left alone?

Because the table does not contain them. It is a collection of common spellings (159 entries), not a complete mapping — Martian text has unbounded variation (a single character can have a dozen rare variants), so no table can be complete. Unmatched characters pass through unchanged, which is why the output is a mix of Martian and ordinary text. That is the limit of this tool, not a fault in it.

Why does another tool convert the same word differently?

Because Martian text has no standard. It was never specified by anyone; it grew organically on the Chinese internet in the 2000s, mixing homophones, lookalike characters, variant forms and Bopomofo, so a single character often has several spellings (的 can be ㄉ, 旳, ㄉㄜ and more). Every generator collects a different set and prioritises differently, so the results must differ — none of them is "correct".

How is the direction detected?

By counting how many entries in the table the input matches, and going with the side that matches more. That is unlike the other tools here, which look at the first character, because Martian text has no such explicit marker. Getting it wrong is cheap: the wrong direction just returns something nearly unchanged (unmatched text passes through), rather than producing output that looks right and is wrong. With no matches at all the input is returned as-is — an error there would read as a broken tool.

How is the Bopomofo handled?

The few substitutes that actually show up online — `ㄉ` (的), `ㄋ` (了), `ㄇ` (吗), `ㄖ` (日) — are included. The full Bopomofo alphabet is not, because those letters are ordinary content in Taiwanese zhuyin input; substituting all of them would corrupt genuine zhuyin text. Script letters (𝔽𝕠𝕠 and friends) are likewise excluded, since they are normal characters in mathematics and typography.

Is my text uploaded?

No. The conversion runs entirely in browser memory; the page makes no requests and works offline.