Bamini ⇄ Unicode Tamil Converter

This page now does the work of two. The tool above handles Bamini → Unicode and Unicode → Bamini in the same window: paste Bamini ASCII in the left pane to get Unicode Tamil on the right, or run the reverse and turn Unicode Tamil into Bamini ASCII for legacy work. The Swap button moves text between the two panes, so flipping direction is one click — no second page, no re-pasting.

Why both? Because Tamil text in 2026 lives in two worlds at once. Typing institutes across Tamil Nadu still teach the Bamini layout. Court offices and DTP shops still file, print, and archive in it. Meanwhile every website, phone keyboard, and government portal speaks Unicode. Anyone who works with Tamil documents ends up ferrying text across that border in both directions, sometimes in the same afternoon.

Both directions use the same ~270-entry mapping table, drawn verbatim from the open-source Pakeetharan converter. Conversion runs in your browser with plain JavaScript. No upload, no sign-up, and a practical ceiling of about 5,000 characters per pass.

Bamini is an ASCII font — each Tamil character is mapped to a Latin keystroke. When you type "f" with the Bamini font applied, the visual glyph is "க"; when you type "fp", the rendered output is "கி". Without Bamini installed, your device shows the underlying Latin characters instead of the Tamil.

Unicode Tamil takes the opposite approach. Each Tamil character has a dedicated code point (க is U+0B95, கி is the sequence க + ி = U+0B95 U+0BBF) and renders identically on every system — Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux — without needing a special font.

The converter takes Bamini ASCII input and looks up each glyph in the mapping table, longest sequences first. Three-key runs such as "Nfh" (கோ) are matched before two-key ones like "Nf" (கே), which are matched before single keys. That ordering is what keeps compound syllables from being split apart mid-match.

The table covers every standard Tamil consonant–vowel combination plus all 12 independent vowels and the aytham (ஃ). A few rare ligatures may need manual touch-up; the output pane is editable for exactly that reason.

The reverse pass walks your Unicode Tamil input character by character, ligature by ligature, and emits the Bamini ASCII sequence for each one. கோ becomes the three keystrokes "Nfh", க் becomes "f;", and ஸ்ரீ collapses to a single "=" — the key Bamini reserves for that ligature.

The result will look like Latin gibberish in the output pane. That is expected, and it means the conversion worked. Bamini ASCII only renders as Tamil once you paste it into a document and apply the Bamini font; the codes themselves are Latin letters and punctuation.

Where does this direction matter? Tamil Nadu government offices, typing certifications, and plenty of legacy publishing pipelines still run on Bamini. If you type comfortably in Unicode (Tamil99 or InScript) but need to hand over Bamini-formatted material, converting beats retyping on a layout you never learned.

Multi-character ordering is handled for you. The converter matches full syllables (கோ, கௌ) before bare consonants (க), so vowel signs land in the correct visual position — kombu before the consonant, exactly as a Bamini typist would key it.

The two directions serve different people on different days. Here is where each one earns its keep.

Bamini → Unicode: old files, modern destinations

Typing-institute notes. If you learned Tamil typing at an institute in Chennai, Madurai, or Trichy, your speed drills, model passages, and course notes were almost certainly keyed in Bamini. Convert them once and they become usable in Google Docs, WhatsApp, email — anywhere text travels.

Court and DTP archives. District court offices and desktop-publishing shops sit on decades of Bamini-encoded orders, cause lists, wedding-card masters, and pamphlets. None of it can go on a website, into an e-filing portal, or through email as readable Tamil until it becomes Unicode.

TNPSC preparation. TNPSC and most newer recruitment bodies conduct their Tamil skill tests on Unicode systems. If you hold stacks of older Bamini practice material, convert the passages here and rehearse them on a Unicode practice page instead of letting good material go to waste.

Unicode → Bamini: feeding the legacy pipeline

Practice text for Bamini-based typing tests. Some institutes and older test centres still assess on the Bamini layout. Copy any Unicode Tamil news article, convert it, and you have an unlimited supply of fresh Bamini practice passages.

Print shops and legacy templates. PageMaker and CorelDRAW templates built in the 2000s have Bamini text frames baked in. Pasting new Unicode text breaks the layout; converting the text to Bamini first drops it straight into the old frame.

Offices that standardise on Bamini. Where a court section or a government press still expects Bamini files, converting your Unicode draft is faster, and less error-prone, than retyping it on an unfamiliar layout.

Bamini is a glyph encoding, not a character encoding. The file stores plain Latin bytes — f, h, N, semicolons — and the font draws Tamil shapes over them. "f" is drawn as க, "fh" as கா, and "f;" as க்: the pulli, the dot that mutes the inherent vowel, is a semicolon in your actual data.

Vowel signs follow visual order, not logical order. The kombu — the left-side stroke in கெ, கே, கொ, கோ — is keyed before the consonant it belongs to, because that is where it sits on paper: கெ is stored as "nf", and கோ as the three-key run "Nfh". Unicode flips this. It stores the consonant first (க, U+0B95) and the vowel sign second (ே, U+0BC7), and the rendering engine draws the kombu to the left on its own.

That one difference explains every familiar Bamini breakage. Change the font and the Tamil vanishes, because the bytes were never Tamil to begin with — paste Bamini text into WhatsApp, a browser form, or any machine without the font and you see strings like "jkpo;" where தமிழ் should be. Ctrl+F cannot find Tamil words in a Bamini file. Alphabetical sorting follows Latin byte values rather than the Tamil alphabet. Screen readers announce nonsense letters.

Unicode fixes all of it by giving every Tamil character a permanent address in the U+0B80–U+0BFF block. That is why the long-term direction of travel is one way, toward Unicode — and why the reverse converter exists: to keep legacy pipelines fed during the transition.

Special keys. Bamini assigns odd keys to a few common items: ஸ்ரீ lives on "=", the comma in converted text comes from Bamini's ">" key, and the aytham (ஃ) sits on "/". If a stray "=" or ">" survives in your output, the source text probably used a non-standard variant of one of these keys.

Mixed English and Tamil — the big one. Every Latin letter doubles as a Bamini code, so the converter cannot tell the English word "TNPSC" from four Bamini keystrokes; it will dutifully turn it into Tamil gibberish. Before a Bamini → Unicode pass, lift English words and abbreviations out of the text, convert, then put them back. Digits 0–9 are safe and pass through untouched in both directions.

Mixed-font documents. Word files assembled over years often switch fonts mid-document: Bamini paragraphs, a TSCII heading, an English caption. Convert such files paragraph by paragraph, checking each chunk, rather than pasting the whole document in one go.

Wrong legacy encoding. Bamini is one of several pre-Unicode Tamil encodings. TSCII, TAB, TAM, ELCOT, Vanavil, and Amudham files look similar — Latin gibberish without their font — but use different mappings, and feeding them to a Bamini converter produces well-formed garbage. Check which font the original document used before you convert.

Quick accuracy checklist

• Convert in chunks. Up to 5,000 characters per pass. Long pastes from PDFs carry hidden formatting that confuses any converter; split the text into paragraphs.
• Proofread compound syllables. Two- and three-key sequences (கொ, கோ, கௌ) are the most fragile part of any mapping. Skim the output for split or doubled vowel signs.
• Edit in place. Both panes are editable. Fix a rare ligature by hand before you hit Copy.
• Apply the font on the Bamini side. Unicode → Bamini output reads as Latin noise until the Bamini font is applied in the target document. That is normal.
• Never convert on exam day. Practise on the layout your test centre ships — Bamini at older TN centres, Tamil InScript at newer ones. Our TNPSC Tamil typing pages cover both.