Glǽmscribe (or Glaemscribe) is an open-source engine and library written by Benjamin Talagan Babut, dedicated to transcribing languages invented by J. R. R. Tolkien (generally written with Latin letters and diacritics) into writing systems he devised in his works – such as tengwar, cirth or sarati. By extension, it can also be used with languages and writings of our primary world.

More than a classical tengwar transcriber, Glǽmscribe is a generic transcription engine, the behaviour of which is driven by mode files written in a custom programming language. A mode in Tolkien’s parlance refers to a specific system assigning phonetic values to the writing signs. For Glǽmscribe, it is a system defined by a set of rules describing relations between input (Latin letters and diacritics) and output (Tolkienian writing signs).

A fully-integrated version with a web user interface is available here on Glǽmscrafu. It offers a large variety of languages and modes and is suitable for most people and day-to-day use.

Glǽmscribe also exists as a command-line tool for automated/bench transcriptions (see the GitHub project page for further information).

If you are motivated in writing new modes for Glǽmscribe, please visit the technical documentation on Glǽmscribe architecture and concepts, and mode programming language.

The Glǽmscribe engine currently has two implementations: the first one in Ruby and the second one in JavaScript.

• The Ruby version is available as a Ruby gem; it is used by the command line tool.
• The JavaScript version is completely independent and can be used as a client-side library in web applications.

See the GitHub project page for further information on how to integrate Glǽmscribe.