Chinese to Pinyin Converter
Translate your Chinese text into pinyin text. You can choose with or without tones. (e.g. : 我是法国人)
Why the tones matter, and why one character can have two readings
Pinyin without tones is not pinyin, it is a rough guide. Mandarin uses four tones plus a neutral one, and the difference between them is not decoration: ma can mean mother, hemp, horse or scold depending only on the pitch of the vowel. A text transcribed without tone marks is readable, but it cannot be pronounced correctly from the page.
The converter gives you both, and the choice is deliberate. Tone marks are what you want for reading aloud and for learning. Plain letters are what you want for a file name, a URL, a database field, or anywhere a diacritic would cause trouble.
One thing no automatic converter can fully solve: a good number of Chinese characters have more than one reading, and which one applies depends on the word they sit in. The character that means to walk is read xing in that sense and hang when it means a row or a bank. The transcription follows the most common reading of each word it recognises, which is right nearly all the time and wrong on names and on rare compounds. When the reading matters, check the word itself in the dictionary.