Cow / Moo Language Translator — English to COW
Translate English text into COW, the esoteric programming language (created by Sean Heber in 2003) where every instruction is a variation of "moo". The translator converts your words into valid COW bytecode — a Brainfuck-derived language using eight commands (MOO, moo, MoO, moO, Moo, OOO, MOo, MoO) — that a COW interpreter would execute to print your original message.
Enter some text and click Translate to see the result
What Is the COW Language?
COW is an esoteric programming language created by Sean Heber in 2003.
It belongs to the same family as Brainfuck — minimalist languages designed more as intellectual
curiosities than practical tools. COW replaces Brainfuck's eight cryptic single-character instructions
with eight variations of the word moo, ranging from MOO
to moo, each distinguished by capitalisation.
The result is source code that looks — and reads aloud — exactly like a herd of cattle.
Despite its bovine appearance, COW is Turing-complete: given enough moos, it can
compute anything a conventional programming language can. It even adds a command Brainfuck lacks —
OOO — which stores the current memory
cell's value for later use, making certain operations slightly more convenient than their Brainfuck
equivalents.
The Eight COW Commands
Every COW program is built from exactly eight instructions. Capitalisation is everything —
MoO and
moO do completely different things:
| Command | What It Does |
|---|---|
| moo | Jump back to matching MOO if current cell is non-zero (loop end) |
| mOo | Move memory pointer one cell to the left |
| moO | Increment the current memory cell by 1 |
| mOO | Execute the value in the current cell as a COW command (0–7) |
| Moo | Output the current cell as ASCII (or read input if cell is 0) |
| MOo | Decrement the current memory cell by 1 |
| MoO | Move memory pointer one cell to the right |
| MOO | Jump forward to matching moo if current cell is zero (loop start) |
| OOO | Store/retrieve the current cell value using a special register |
COW and the Esoteric Language Tradition
Esoteric programming languages — esolangs — are created not for practical use but to explore the outer edges of language design, to amuse, or to challenge programmers in unexpected ways. Brainfuck (1993, Urban Müller) kicked off the modern esolang movement with its eight-symbol tape-machine model. COW extends this tradition by replacing those symbols with monosyllabic bovine sounds, making the code simultaneously more readable to a cow and no more readable to anyone else.
Other celebrated esolangs include Whitespace (where only spaces, tabs, and newlines matter), Chef (programs written as cooking recipes), Malbolge (deliberately designed to be impossible to program in), and LOLCODE (written in internet-cat speak). COW occupies a charming middle ground: simple enough to understand, absurd enough to delight.
How This COW Translator Works
This translator converts any English text into valid, executable COW code. It works in two stages.
First, your input text is compiled into Brainfuck — a sequence of
+ increments and
. output commands that walk a memory
pointer up to each character's ASCII value and prints it. Second, every Brainfuck symbol is swapped
for its COW equivalent: + becomes
moO,
- becomes
mOo, and
. becomes
Moo.
The output is genuine COW source code — paste it into any COW interpreter and it will print your original message. Because each character is encoded as a run of increments from the previous ASCII value, the output scales with the complexity of your text. A longer input or more varied characters means more moos. The translation API is available for developers who want to integrate COW encoding into their own applications.
moO moO moO Moo moO moO moO moO moO Moo ...
