A stand-alone cross-platform converter for different Sanskrit transliteration systems
SansConverter is an offline program that allows you to easily and quickly convert transliterated Sanskrit text from one transliteration system to another. You can also type in Sanskrit text in the standard Roman transliteration (IAST) (or other systems) using just your standard QWERTY keyboard.
You can use it to create Sanskrit text with diacritics to use later in online posts, messages, books, articles, etc.
- Several well-known systems are supported, namely Balaram (1), IAST (2), Harvard-Kyoto (3), Velthuis (4), Cyrillic transliteration both in Russian (5) and Ukrainian (6) versions, and Gaura Times (7) — a legacy non-Unicode Cyrillic system developed by the Russian ISKCON BBT, used in their publications and requiring a custom font of the same name.
- The text is converted “on the spot” while you are typing or whenever it is pasted into the input window.
- The program remembers previous transliteration systems that you chose last time and opens them automatically when started next time.
- It also remembers the size of the window (if you resize it) and its position (if you move it on your screen).
- You can also access all buttons and select transliteration systems with your keyboard, either by pressing Tab or using the shortcuts (see the macOS keyboard navigation note in the Installation section below).
- You can choose between “ṁ” or “ṃ” by checking the box in the main window (this setting is also remembered at next start).
- Text can be pasted from the clipboard and converted text can be copied to clipboard by pressing the respective buttons.
- You can enable or disable individual transliteration systems via Settings → Enable/Disable encodings in the menu — only the systems you need will appear in the dropdowns.
NOTE: There is a bug when converting from IAST to Balaram (which is caused by the way Balaram system was build) - “ṣ” is converted to “ñ”. Thus, if you convert IAST text like “puruṣa” to Balaram you will get “puruïa” (“puruña”). This is because “ñ” was also used in Balaram and thus it gets converted wrongly. Since Balaram is a legacy system and I don’t know if many people will use this program to convert IAST text to Balaram, I decided to save time and to leave this as it is for now. The workaround for such little problem is to first convert from IAST to any other system (preferably Velthuis because it allows capital letters) and then use “Swap transliterations and texts” button and select Balaram as the target transliteration.
Download the latest release for your platform from the Releases page:
- Windows: download the
.zip, extract it, and runSansConverter.exe. You can pin it to your Taskbar for easy access. - macOS: download the
.dmg, open it, and drag the app to your Applications folder or Dock. - Linux: download the
.tar.gz, extract it, and run theSansConverterbinary.
The program requires no installation.
macOS note: When opening the app for the first time, macOS may show a warning that it cannot verify the app. This is because the app is not signed with an Apple Developer certificate. To open it anyway:
- Try to open the app — click Done when the warning appears.
- Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security.
- Scroll down and click Open Anyway next to the SansConverter entry.
Alternatively, run this command in Terminal:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /path/to/SansConverter.app
macOS keyboard navigation: To use Tab for navigating between controls, go to System Settings → Keyboard and enable "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls".
There is some more information about transliteration systems under “Help” menu.
You can also send your feedback or reports to the address given in the “About” menu.
