Gen Z to English Translator

About this tool

This reads Gen Z slang and gives you plain English. It has two views. Plain English swaps the slang that has one clear meaning, so "no cap, this is bussin" becomes "no lie, this is really good", and abbreviations such as ngl, tbh, idk and fr are spelled out. Original with explanations keeps your text and puts the meaning in brackets after every slang term. A list under the boxes shows each term found, what it means and how many times it appeared. Many slang words are also ordinary English: cap, fire, tea, ate, mid, fit, dead, bet and others. Swapping them blindly would ruin normal sentences ("a baseball cap", "I ate dinner"), so the translator leaves them as they are and marks them "not swapped" in the list, explaining the slang sense instead. The same goes for phrases that can be meant literally or that do not fit a word-for-word swap, such as "it's giving", "ghosted", "cringe" and "touch grass". Case is kept (Ngl becomes Not going to lie), hyphenated words such as mid-air are not touched, and a few terms only match in the exact case written, and short abbreviations are left alone when written in ALL CAPS because they are real acronyms too (NGL prices, the SUS score, the AF base), so RN (a nurse) is not read as "right now", Fr. (Father) is not read as "for real", and Ohio, Stan and Sigma are left alone as names. The dictionary has over 200 entries covering about 280 spellings, and about 80 of them are safe to swap. Its term list was checked against the open Gen-Z slang dataset by Kasper Cools (MIT licence), and all 145 of that dataset's entries are covered; where the dataset's description was inaccurate or too narrow (for example yeet, cheugy and big brain) the meaning here was corrected using dictionary sources. It also covers every word our English to Gen Z converter can produce, so the two tools are true opposites. Everyday words with a slang sense (mom, fire, thirsty, flex, fit and similar) are only pointed out if you tick the box for them, so ordinary sentences are not littered with notes. Crude or derogatory terms are included because people need to understand them, but they carry a tag and neutral wording. Slang changes quickly and means different things in different communities and countries, so the meanings here are a general guide rather than a rule, and new terms will be missing. It is a word and phrase lookup, not an AI: it does not understand context beyond the rules above. Your text stays in your browser.

How to use it

1. Paste or type the Gen Z text.
2. Choose Plain English, or Original with explanations.
3. Read the slang list for what each term means.
4. Copy the result.

Example

fit and fire are also normal words, so they are explained in the list but not swapped.

ngl that fit is fire, no cap. she ate and left no crumbs fr fr

not going to lie that fit is fire, no lie. she did it perfectly for real

Common problems

A slang word was not changed

It is probably also an ordinary English word (like fire, tea or ate), so it is left alone on purpose. Check the slang list below the boxes, or switch to Original with explanations.

A term is missing

Slang moves faster than any dictionary and varies by community. This covers common terms; for a brand-new one, search for it or ask where it was used.

The result reads oddly

This swaps words and phrases; it does not rewrite the sentence. Edit the grammar by hand where it sounds stiff.