Many Bangladeshi offices, newspapers, publishers and individuals have years of documents typed in Bijoy. When you open such a file in a program that does not have the right font, or when you paste the text into a website, a phone or a Google Doc, the Bangla turns into strange English-looking letters like "Avwg evsjvq Mvb MvB". That happens because the file does not contain real Bangla characters at all. This converter turns that text into proper Unicode Bangla, and it can go the other way when you need Bijoy text for a print workflow.

What is the difference between Bijoy and Unicode?

Bijoy is a typing system, with its own keyboard layout, created for Bangla computing in the late 1980s. It became the standard in newspapers, printing presses and government offices. The text is stored in the older ANSI way: each Bangla letter is mapped to an ordinary Latin character or symbol, and a special font such as SutonnyMJ draws it as a Bangla glyph. If you change the font to Arial, the same text looks like English nonsense.

Unicode is the global standard. Every Bangla letter, vowel sign and conjunct has its own code. The text is the same on every device, search engines can read it, you can copy it between apps, and it works with fonts such as Kalpurush, Noto Sans Bengali and SolaimanLipi. Websites, Facebook, WhatsApp, Google Docs and modern phones all expect Unicode. That is why old Bijoy text has to be converted before you publish it online.

How to use the converter

1. Select Bijoy → Unicode (the default) or Unicode → Bijoy.
2. Paste your text into the left box. The converted text appears in the right box while you type.
3. Press Copy Result and paste it where you need it.
4. Use Swap to move the output into the input and flip the direction. This is useful to test a round trip.

The conversion takes place in your browser. Your text is not uploaded, so it is safe for private letters and unpublished articles.

Example conversions

• Avwg evsjv‡`‡ki gvbyl becomes আমি বাংলাদেশের মানুষ
• weÁvb becomes বিজ্ঞান
• cÖ_g becomes প্রথম
• Kg©Pvix becomes কর্মচারী
• wbg©vY becomes নির্মাণ

In the other direction, Unicode স্বাধীনতা becomes ¯^vaxbZv. If you paste that into Word with the font SutonnyMJ selected, it appears as Bangla again.

Why conversion is harder than it looks

Bijoy stores letters in typing order and visual order, while Unicode stores them in logical order. Three details cause most of the work:

• Vowel signs that appear before the letter. The signs for i (ি), e (ে) and oi (ৈ) are drawn on the left of the consonant, and Bijoy types them first. Unicode stores them after the consonant. The converter moves them to the correct place, including across conjuncts like স্ক in স্কুল.
• The reph (র্). The upper-hook form of র is typed after the consonant in Bijoy but belongs before it in Unicode, as in কর্ম. The tool reorders it, including after long conjuncts.
• Conjunct glyphs. Many conjuncts such as ক্ষ, জ্ঞ, ন্ত and ষ্ট have a single character in a Bijoy font. In Unicode they are built from letters joined with a hasanta (্). The converter holds a long table of these glyphs.

The two-way conversion uses character tables and reordering rules adapted from the MIT-licensed open-source project bijoy-to-unicode-file-converter, rewritten for JavaScript and tested on common words. A few corrections were made to the reph handling so that words with several conjuncts, such as কর্মকর্তা and অর্থনীতি, convert correctly.

Tips for a clean conversion

• Paste only Bangla text typed in Bijoy. English words inside a Bijoy document look exactly like Bijoy Bangla to a computer, because both use the same Latin characters. The tool cannot tell them apart, so English words will be changed into Bangla letters. Convert the Bangla parts and keep the English words separate.
• Copy the text from the source, not a screenshot or PDF image. The tool converts text, not pictures. For a scanned page use the Image to Text converter first. Bangla OCR returns Unicode, so no Bijoy conversion is needed afterwards.
• Copy from Word with the right font. Text that looks like Bangla in Word with SutonnyMJ is Bijoy text under the surface. Select it and copy as normal; the underlying characters are what the converter needs.
• Proofread the result. Check names, numbers and rare conjuncts. Different Bijoy-compatible fonts and some older software use slightly different glyph tables, so unusual symbols can be missed.
• After conversion, change the font. If the new Unicode text shows boxes, apply a Bangla Unicode font such as Kalpurush, Nirmala UI or Noto Sans Bengali.

Unicode to Bijoy: when do you need it?

Some printing presses and design programs, for example older PageMaker or InDesign workflows, still require Bijoy text with a MJ font. You can write or collect your text in Unicode and convert it to Bijoy for those programs. Remember that the Bijoy output only appears as Bangla when you apply a Bijoy font. In a normal text box it looks like Latin symbols, and that is expected. The tool shows a reminder when you choose this direction.

Known limits

• Very rare conjuncts, special symbols and fully custom glyphs may not be mapped.
• Bangla digits are converted, but some punctuation marks and quotation marks differ between fonts.
• Mixed English-Bangla text needs separate handling, as explained above.
• For legal documents and published books, always do a final reading by a person.

Related tools

After conversion you may want to count words in your Bangla article with the Word Counter, sort a list of Bangla names with the Sort Lines tool, or write an amount in Bangla words with the Number to Words Converter.

Frequently asked questions