At VerbaAlpina, the transcription of complex writing systems, with the exclusive use of ASCII symbols, is referred to as "Betacode". This is in accordance with the terminology of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), which developed the corresponding concept in the early 1970s for the electronic collection of ancient Greek texts with the computational means of the time. (Examples for conceptionally comparable transcription systems would be SAMPA and X-SAMPA for IPA or the "Buckwalter transliteration" for Arabic.) The following graphic illustrates the procedure with an example from the Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas of Italy and Southern Switzerland (AIS):




During the transfer of the phonetic transcription after Böhmer-Ascoli, which is used in the linguistic atlas (roughly corresponding to Teuthonista; a list with the exact codings can be found here), into sequences consisting of ASCII symbols, a simple distinction is first made between standard characters and diacritics. If a standard character is present in the ASCII code, it is represented by itself during transfer (which is consistently the case in the given example). Immediately behind the standard character, all the diacritics associated with it will then be listed successively, each one being represented by a specific ASCII symbol. At VerbaAlpina, the assignment of diacritics to ASCII symbols is unambiguous and documented in specific tables within the VerbaAlpina-database. Where possible, the choice of the assigned symbol will be guided by the principle of visual resemblance. Thus, the dot below the e in the word tega is represented by a question mark: te? . Based on their arrangement at the standard character, the diacritics are written in the order bottom to top and left to right behind the base character. Because of the principle of visual resemblance, the assignment of diacritics to ASCII symbols is made independently of the source-specific semantics. In other words: Even if a hook below a standard character carries an utterly different phonetic meaning in one source compared to another, the diacritic will still be represented by an appended parenthesis in both cases. The semantic differences are documented within the source-specific transcription tables. They regulate the conversion of Betacode into the output-transcription in accordance with IPA. (One and the same beta-coding can thus lead to varying IPA-coding, depending on the source.)
The process described possesses several advantages:
- Data acquisition can be performed at a comparatively high pace on conventional standard keyboards and is not dependent on any operating system,
- transcriptors do not need to be familiar with phonetic transcription systems,
- any character or diacritic can be entered, regardless of whether they are or are not coded in Unicode, and
- electronic data acquisition is carried out without loss of information.
Through replacement routines, Betacode can be transferred into virtually any other transcription system. During such conversions, loss of information might occur. This, however, is inherent in the nature of transcription systems. For instance, phonetic transcription after Böhmer-Ascoli differentiates between multiple degrees of openness in a granularity that is not provided in the IPA-system.