toPhonetics Converter

toPhonetics is an app that provides fully interactive transcriptions of English texts. It displays your input's phonemic transcription using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and allows you • to listen to it read aloud visually, following the narration with a cursor, • to quickly check the translation of individual words or selected fragments (requires iOS 18+), • to export and share the transcription results in various formats including PDF (via the Print option), • to export the audio of the text read using your chosen voice and speech rate.

And much more:

• See phonetic transcription of the whole text, not just the dictionary forms of separate words.
• Choose between British and American* pronunciation. When British dialect is selected the [r] sound at the end of the word is only voiced if followed by a vowel, which follows British phonetic convention.
• International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols used.
• The structure of the text and sentences in it (line breaks, punctuation marks, etc.) is preserved in phonetic transcription output making it easier to read.
• You can output the text and its phonetic transcription along each other line-by-line to make back-reference to the original text easier.
• An option to vary pronunciation depending on whether words are in stressed or weak position in the sentence, as in connected speech. Weak forms are italicized in the output.
• Words in CAPS are interpreted as acronyms if the word is not found in the database. Acronym transcriptions will be shown with hyphens between letters.
• In addition to commonly used vocabulary the database contains a very substantial amount of place names (including names of countries, their capitals, US states, UK counties), nationalities and popular names.
• Where a word has a number of possible pronunciations (highlighted in blue in the output) you can select the one that agrees with the context by tapping on it.
• Print out the output results, share via email or copy to pasteboard.
• Let the built-in speech synthesiser read your text out loud. Control the playback and follow IPA transcription of the current word with a highlight. Speech audio can be exported as a file.
• Custom URL scheme to open toPhonetics from 3rd-party apps.

Gestures (IPA transcription screen):

1. Single tap
   • Tap a word to set the cursor to it and speak it (you can mute/un-mute it with the button at your bottom-right).
   • Tap in a blank space to stop speech and hide the cursor.
2. Double-tap
   • Double-tap a word to open it in the built-in dictionary; if the word has multiple pronunciations you'll see the list of them first.
   • Double-tap in a blank space to reset the font to the size set in iOS preferences.
3. Pinch in or out to make the text smaller or larger.
4. Start to slide horizontally to select a part of your text. The Speak button respects current selection.

*) American transcriptions are based on the open Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary.