Bamini to Unicode Converter

Bamini is a Tamil font from the years before Unicode Tamil worked on ordinary computers. It became one of the most common Tamil fonts in Sri Lanka and across the diaspora, used for school notes, church and temple newsletters, magazines, wedding invitations and office letters. Many of those files are still in use, and many are now unreadable.

The font works by drawing a Tamil shape in place of each English key, following a typewriter-style layout. Type tzf;fk; with Bamini selected and the screen shows வணக்கம். The file, though, only ever contained the English letters. Send it to someone without the font, or open it on a phone, and they see tzf;fk;.

Converting to Unicode fixes this for good. Unicode Tamil is the same in every font, so the text can be read, searched, copied and spell-checked anywhere.

1. Press Open file above (under More on a phone) and choose the .docx file. You can also drag the file onto the converter.
2. The converter lists every font in the document, with the text each one holds as it is stored. Bamini is picked out by its name. If your Tamil is in a Bamini-style font with another name, set it to From Bamini.
3. Check the preview. Each paragraph is shown as stored, such as md;Gs;s mk;kh>, and as Unicode, அன்புள்ள அம்மா, so you can see that it reads naturally.
4. Choose the Unicode font for the converted text. Nirmala UI is installed with Windows and Microsoft Office, so it is the safe choice.
5. Press Download. You get a copy named after your file with -unicode at the end. Your original file is not changed.

Only the text in the fonts you chose is rewritten. Bold, italics, sizes, colours, tables, images, headers and footers, footnotes, text boxes and tracked changes stay as they were, and English words in other fonts are left alone. A word split between two runs of formatting, which Word does more often than you would think, is joined up before it is converted, so N + fhtpy; still becomes கோவில்.

Copy and Paste Instead

For a short piece of text, or a file that isn't a .docx, copy the text and paste it into the left box. It will look like English letters and symbols. That is expected. Press Copy, paste into your document with Keep Text Only so the Bamini font isn't carried across, and set a Unicode Tamil font. Plain-text files open with Open file too, and Download .txt saves UTF-8 that Word and Notepad read correctly.

Most Words Are Garbled, Not Just a Few

The text was probably typed in a different legacy font. Try the Tamil Unicode converter, which guesses the font for you. If the original shows accented letters like ¾Á¢ú, it is TSCII, not Bamini.

Commas Have Turned Into இ

In Bamini, the comma key draws இ and a real comma is typed as >. If someone typed commas in an English font inside the document, they come out as இ. Search for the stray letters and replace them.

The Unicode Looks Right Here but Shows Boxes in Word

The text is fine; the font isn't. Select it and set Nirmala UI, which comes with Windows and Office, or Noto Sans Tamil. Latha is not always there: on Windows 10 it belongs to the optional Tamil Supplemental Fonts. If the font menu still shows Bamini, paste again with Keep Text Only.

Some Words in the Converted Document Are Still English Letters

Those words are in a font the converter left alone. Open the original file again, find that font in the list (its sample will look like jkpo;), set it to From Bamini and download again.

Text Copied From a PDF

If the PDF was made from a Bamini document, copying usually gives Bamini letters, which convert as normal. If you get empty boxes or random symbols, the PDF holds no usable text. Convert the original Word file instead.

The File Is a .doc, Not a .docx

Older Word files can't be read here. Open the file in Word, choose File → Save As, pick Word Document (.docx), and open the new file.

The Left Box Already Shows Tamil Letters

Then the text is Unicode already and needs no conversion. Unicode Tamil pasted into the box is left as it is.