Abstract: The invention relates to a code converter with the specific capability of converting certain predetermined combinations of two or more code words of a first coding system to a single code word of a second coding system. The invention also relates to a converter with means for recognizing the combination, and to the recognizer per se. In a specific application, the converter system is for converting code words of a presently existing coding system, which are representative of characters in the Arabic-Farsi languages, and all languages written in Arabic scripts, to code words of a second coding system. The Arabic-Farsi languages include special characters, which comprise an overdot and an undercharacter, and each of these special characters is represented by two code words. The converter compresses the two code words to a single respective code word.