The linguistic material is represented graphically in double way in order to fulfil the opposite demands of being faithful to the sources and of easy comparability:

(1) Input version in original transcription
In the VA portal, sources are brought together which come from different discipline's traditions (Romance studies, German studies, Slavonic studies) and which represent different historical stages of dialectological research. Some of the dictionary data have been collected at the beginning of the last century (GPSR) and others only a few years ago (ALD). It is therefore necessary for reasons of the history of science to respect the original transcription to the greatest possible extent. For technical reasons, it is, however, impossible to keep unchanged certain conventions. This is true especially for the vertical combination of base characters ('letters') and diacritical marks, as e.g. if a symbol for stress accent is positioned over a symbol for length over a vowel over a symbol for closure (Betacode). These conventions are transferred to linear sequences of characters in each time defined technical transcriptions, in which, however, exclusively ASCII characters are used (so-called betacode). For the beta encoding, one can make to most of graphic resemblances between the original diacritic and the ASCII equivalence, which are intuitively understandable, to a certain degree. They are mnemonically favourable.

(2) Output version in IPA
The data output in a uniform transcription is desirable from the point of view of comparability and user-friendliness. Therefore, all Beta Codes are transferred to IPA characters using specific substitution routines. There are a few inevitable incompatibilities for the cases where two different basic characters in IPA correspond to one basic character which is specified by diacritics in the input transcription. This is especially the case for the degrees of vowel height: in the palatal row, the two basic characters <i> and <e> in combination with the diacritic closure dot and one or two opening ticks allow depicting six degrees of vowel height. In Beta encoding these vowels are the following: i – i( – i((– e?-- e – e(– e((. In IPA, there are only four basic characters for these vowels: i – ɪ – e – ɛ.