Transcripteur
A phonetic transcription management system

Download the latest version 4.22 (exe installer)

Download the latest version 4.22 (zip portable)

Transcripteur is free for personal use.

What is Transcripteur?

Transcripteur has been designed to simplify the task of creating, maintaining, and managing large collections of phonetic transcriptions.

The user can work with multiple collections simultaneously, utilize custom variant decorations, and visualize real-time statistics with which to track progress.

Of particular interest, the user can define custom keyboard bindings that make it possible to type phonetic characters directly by simple key press. Moreover, Transcripteur can perform automatic phonotactic validation and report which rules are broken, if any.

Intended audience

Transcripteur has been designed to be used by language researchers and pedagogues seeking to carry out certain kinds of linguistic analyses.

You should be aware that it can be somewhat difficult to get started with Transcripteur, particularly since the initial configuration might require the selection of (and likely the need to create) status flags, keyboard bindings, vowel and consonant inventories, and a set of phonotactic rules. There is, unfortunately, no way around this. The task itself is complex. Our recommendation is to begin with a test collection that makes use of the default settings and to gradually modify these. Once comfortable with the different elements at work, the chore of creating the specific configuration to suit the aims of your particular project will pay off handsomely.

Please read this documentation carefully and contact us if you have any problems.

Editor

Keyboard bindings

How to work with sets of bindings: (list on the left in the screenshot below)

'Add inventories' adds one or several inventories to the key-symbols list.

How to work with key-symbols associations: (list on the right in the screenshot above)

Panoptic scanner

The Panoptic scanner will load all entries in the active document. Note that, by default, these entries will not be displayed if there are more than 10,000 as this is a rather lengthy operation. To override this behavior and display all entries no matter their amount, go to the Configuration dialog and select the appropriate setting.

Orthographic filter:

Phonetic filter:

The 'Use regex' checkbox:

Press the ⟳ button to display the entire list. If there are more than 10,000 entries and the setting is set to display only, the list will be cleared.

Find/replace comboboxes:

Press the 'Propagate' button to replace the phonetic transcriptions of the checked entries with their corresponding 'proposed' transcriptions.

Phonetic notepad

Test platform

List of transcriptions: (left in the screenshot below)

Reports: (right in the screenshot above)

Inventory manager

All lists of attributes work the same:

'Integrity checks' carries out a number of agreement analyses on the pool and loaded inventories.

'Align pools' sorts the attributes of vowel and consonant pools according to order of each attribute pool.

List of vowels:

'Import' vowels from phonological specification files.

'Export' all/selected vowels to a phonological specification file.

List of consonants:

'Import' consonants from phonological specification files.

'Export' all/selected consonants to a phonological specification file.

List of inventories:

The lists of vowels and consonants work the same:

'Load' additional inventories from disk.

'Update' vowels, consonants, and inventories with the segment information in the pools.

Syllabic attributes

How to work with inventories: (list on the left in the screenshot below)

How to work with stress markers: (list on the center in the screenshot above)

List of syllabic attribute rules: (list on the right in the screenshot above)

Phonotactic rules

How to work with inventories: (list on the left in the screenshot below)

How to work with consonants: (2nd list from the left in the screenshot below)

How to work with groupings of rules: (3rd list from the left in the screenshot above)

How to work with phonotactic rules: (list on the right in the screenshot above)

Status flags

How to work with status flags:

Install & uninstall

To install Transcripteur, execute the setup program. Once installed, Transcripteur can be invoked from the Start menu, the Desktop, or directly from its installation folder in the hard drive.

Transcripteur’s setup includes an uninstaller utility. To run the uninstaller, navigate through the Start Menu or through the hard drive to Transcripteur's folder. Alternatively, it is possible to uninstall Transcripteur through the Programs and Features applet located in the Control Panel.

Portability

Transcripteur requires the .NET Framework 4.7.2. If absent, it will have to be installed manually. If in doubt, please use the installer as it will automatically install .NET Framework 4.7.2 as necessary.

Beyond this requirement, Transcripteur is 100% portable in and of itself. If the contents of the folder where Transcripteur is installed are copied elsewhere (a USB flash drive, for example), Transcripteur will work perfectly.

For convenience, an uninstaller-free zip file is also available for download.

Contact

This document provides an introduction to the capabilities of Transcripteur.