Thread: Website that can transliterate Russian?

I'm trying to learn some Russian for an outreach I'm sometimes doing. I've been searching the web for words and phrases, but most of them are given in the Russian writing system, which I do not yet know. I want to learn it, but for now I'm more interested in just knowing some more words and how to say them. Is there a site of some kind that can do this consistently for me? So far my search for this has been mostly fruitless.

Hi Jeikobu,

Translit RU/EN - Russian Transliteration and Spell Checker
for example.

However, I would not recommend ANYONE to even get aware of this terrible technology. "Russian writing system" is very simple, and transliterated Russian words will give you many troubles.

Spasiba. I actually really want to learn to speak Russian conversationally (at least) someday and learn the writing system, it's just I wanted to know how to say some things in the immediate future without having to take the necessary time to learn the writing system first.

The writing system can be learned in just a few hours. Transliteration can be tricky in certain instances where letters aren't pronounced as you'd think (most notably, the possessive and case ending его, which any transliteration system will put as ego, but it is pronounced yevo). You will also probably run into troubles with your a's and o's. For example, you wrote spasiba--because this is how it is pronounced. In Russian it is spelled спасибо, and thus a transliterator will generate spasibo, which could result in your mispronouncing the o in some words, which could completely change the meaning of what you're saying.

Google Translate
But Zxc is right, it doesn't transliterate well enough to actually learn all words correctly. Be wary! I would suggest learning the alphabet: take 15 minutes per day to read like 20 words. Or more. You'll get the hang of it quite quickly.