Enchanting Table Translator

What is the enchanting table language?

The strange letters in Minecraft are the Standard Galactic Alphabet, usually shortened to SGA. It is a one-for-one substitution cipher for the Latin letters A–Z. You keep the spelling of a word and replace each letter with its matching symbol. There is no separate grammar to learn, and decoding a message does not translate it into another spoken language.

Tom Hall created SGA for the Commander Keen games, starting with Invasion of the Vorticons in 1990, to hide messages for players to discover. Minecraft later reused it for the enchanting table, introduced in Java Edition Beta 1.9 Prerelease 3 and released as part of Minecraft 1.0 in 2011. In Java Edition, the font is called alt. It has no capitals, digits or punctuation of its own.

This page’s tool is a Standard Galactic Alphabet translator that works both ways. Write a name for a fantasy build, send a puzzle to a friend, or decode a string of runes someone has pasted into chat. Uppercase and lowercase English letters produce the same symbols.

How to use the translator

1. Leave English → Enchanting runes selected and type your message. The result updates as you type. Press Copy to put the complete rune text on your clipboard, then paste it into your destination.
2. Select Runes → English and paste a rune message to read it. The decoder returns lowercase letters and keeps any ordinary text mixed into the message.
3. Press Swap to move the translated result into the input and reverse the direction. This is a quick way to check the spelling of your own encoded message.
4. For Java Edition, use the command panel beneath the forward result. Choose your sign version, copy a command, and run it with the necessary game permissions.

An empty box shows a sample. Spaces and line breaks are preserved in your message. Accented Latin letters are split into a base letter and an accent: the copied result keeps the accent after the rune. Commands remove those accents because the game’s table font cannot draw them.

Standard Galactic Alphabet chart

Use this chart to read a screenshot by hand or check a copied character. The Unicode column lists every code point in order; several letters need more than one character to approximate a single rune.

These are look-alike Unicode characters borrowed from other scripts and symbol sets, including Canadian syllabics, APL and technical symbols, a katakana letter, and a mathematical letter. They resemble the game’s runes but are not identical drawings. A phone, browser and game may all display the same pasted text a little differently.

The Under-ConScript Unicode Registry also assigns private-use code points U+EB40–U+EB59 to SGA. Those characters need a special font: an ordinary device does not know which drawing to show. That is why copy-and-paste translators usually emit look-alikes instead. Our decoder accepts both these private-use characters and the look-alike alphabet above.

What does the enchanting table actually say?

The three enchantment buttons show random words selected from a fixed list in the game’s code. They say nothing about the enchantment you will get. A word that sounds powerful is not a promise of a better result. Hover over an option to see one real enchantment; decoding the decorative text does not expose any additional enchantments.

The word list hides jokes and references: “the elder scrolls”, “klaatu berata niktu” from The Day the Earth Stood Still, “xyzzy” from Colossal Cave Adventure, “embiggen” from The Simpsons, and a Cthulhu chant from H. P. Lovecraft. None of the words use J or Q, although both letters exist in the alphabet and work in this translator.

When Notch first showed the enchanting screen in October 2011, its three lines carried deliberate messages. Here they are with their copyable rune equivalents:

• well played internets you are good
  ∴ᒷꖎꖎ !¡ꖎᔑ||ᒷ↸ ╎リℸ ̣ᒷ∷リᒷℸ ̣ᓭ ||𝙹⚍ ᔑ∷ᒷ ⊣𝙹𝙹↸
• these names will be random and confusing
  ℸ ̣⍑ᒷᓭᒷ リᔑᒲᒷᓭ ∴╎ꖎꖎ ʖᒷ ∷ᔑリ↸𝙹ᒲ ᔑリ↸ ᓵ𝙹リ⎓⚍ᓭ╎リ⊣
• each spell costs experience levels
  ᒷᔑᓵ⍑ ᓭ!¡ᒷꖎꖎ ᓵ𝙹ᓭℸ ̣ᓭ ᒷ̇/!¡ᒷ∷╎ᒷリᓵᒷ ꖎᒷ⍊ᒷꖎᓭ

How to show real enchanting runes in Minecraft

Pasting the copied look-alike symbols into chat or onto a sign uses the game’s fallback Unicode font. That font draws ordinary Unicode characters, so the result differs from the table. To get the actual table drawings in Java Edition 1.16 or newer, use a text component with "font":"minecraft:alt". The component contains normal letters; the font setting changes how Minecraft displays them.

For example, this command sends Hello to everyone using the table font:

/tellraw @a {"text":"","extra":[{"text":"Hello","font":"minecraft:alt"}]}

The tool builds both a /tellraw command and a sign /setblock command. Cheats or operator permission are needed. The sign command places an oak sign at your current position, replacing the block there, so choose a clear spot. Sign syntax changed in 1.21.5: select 1.21.5 and newer or 1.20–1.21.4 to match your game. Signs hold four lines; additional lines are left out.

Only runs of A–Z letters receive the rune font. Spaces, numbers, punctuation and other characters stay in the normal font. This keeps a label such as Room 12 readable without asking the table font to draw missing digits. Chat accepts commands up to 256 characters; use a command block for longer output. The tellraw command can preserve more than four lines.

Bedrock Edition has no font setting in commands. There, copied look-alike runes are the option this tool provides, and some characters may show as boxes. Check a short sample on the receiving device before writing a long sign or message.

Tips for reading runes by hand

• There are no separate capitals. A name and its lowercase spelling use the same runes.
• Spaces between words remain useful clues. Start with short words and repeated letter patterns.
• P, T, X and Y use multiple Unicode characters here. Keep each sequence together when copying, especially the space and dot in T.
• Look closely at similar shapes: ⍑ is H, while ⍊ is V; ∷ is R, while ∴ is W.
• A lone slash, exclamation mark or vertical bar is still punctuation. It is not enough on its own to decode as X, P or Y.

For other copyable styles, try the fancy text generator. For secret messages that need turning the phone, use upside down text, or give a spooky message a different texture with the glitch text generator. To swap letters for pictures instead of runes, the Wingdings translator converts English to Wingdings and Webdings and back.