Displaying and transliterating dialect data with the Wenkerbogen-App

References –
  • Engsterhold, Robert & Elvira Glaser. 2023. Ein Jahr Wenkerbögen-App. In Sprachspuren: Berichte aus dem Deutschen Sprachatlas 3(5). https://www.sprachspuren.de/ein-jahr-wenkerboegen-app/ (18 October, 2023.)
  • Schmidt, Jürgen Erich / Herrgen, Joachim / Kehrein, Roland & Lameli, Alfred (ed.). 2020ff. Regionalsprache.de (REDE III). Forschungsplattform zu den modernen Regionalsprachen des Deutschen. Bearbeitet von Robert Engsterhold, Hanna Fischer, Marina Frank, Heiko Girnth, Simon Kasper, Juliane Limper, Salome Lipfert, Georg Oberdorfer, Tillmann Pistor, Anna Wolańska. Unter Mitarbeit von Dennis Beitel, Lisa Dücker, Lea Fischbach, Milena Gropp, Heiko Kammers, Maria Luisa Krapp, Vanessa Lang, Salome Lipfert, Jeffrey Pheiff, Bernd Vielsmeier. Studentische Hilfskräfte. Marburg: Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas.
  • Wrede, Ferdinand, Walther Mitzka & Berhard Martin (ed.). 1927–1956. Deutscher Sprachatlas auf Grund des Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs von Georg Wenker. Begonnen von Ferdinand Wrede, fortgesetzt von Walther Mitzka und Bernhard Martin. Marburg (Lahn): N.G. Elwert’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung.
 Abstract –

Ever since Georg Wenker conducted his dialect survey in the late 19th century, the corresponding questionnaires have been a staple of German-language dialectology. The questionnaires had originally been the basis for the Deutscher Sprachatlas (Wrede, Mitzka & Martin 1927–1956) and remain the most comprehensive survey of German dialects until today. Over the years, the data collected by Wenker, his colleagues and successors has been used by countless other linguists to conduct their own research and they still remain an irreplaceable resource for German dialectology.
Today, the complete collection of Wenker questionnaires can be accessed through the Wenkerbogen-App (apps.dsa.info/wenker). As a part of the ongoing project regionalsprache.de (REDE) which is funded by the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, the Wenkerbogen-App is a web application for displaying and working with high-quality scans of more than 57,000 Wenker questionnaires. The plattform provides a complete catalogue of the questionnaires as well as different tools for displaying, transcribing, and downloading the geo-referenced dialect data. The website also functions as a repository for both the scanned questionnaires and the corresponding transliterations, which can be accessed via an API or directly via the web interface.
The transcription component of the Wenkerbogen-App is inspired by the Swiss citizen science project “Projekt Wenker” (https://wenker.citizenscience.ch), which offered easily accessible tools for the transcription of the Swiss data from Wenker’s survey. After the conclusion of the project, we were allowed to integrate the transliterations from said project into the database of the Wenkerbogen-App. Since then, the Wenkerbogen-App has been acting as a successful citizen science project, in addition to providing research data for all kinds of dialectological analysis.
The Wenkerbogen-App’s tight-knit network of locations includes not only present-day Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but also dialect information from former and current German-speaking regions in e.g. Romania, Hungary, and Italy that have been collected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition, the web application also features Wenker questionnaires in a variety of languages from all over central and eastern Europe. As of April 2024, more than 143,000 sentences have been transliterated and made available through the web application.
The multimedia presentation will feature an exploration of the web interface and the backend of the application. We showcase the Wenkerbogen catalogue with its interactive map tool and demonstrate the process of transliterating the dialect data with the integrated tools. The audience will also get insights into the database and API that are used to host the data.