Overview

FLEx (or Language Explorer, as it is really called) is one program in a suite of programs to help language teams manage language and cultural data, called FieldWorks. Unlike previous programs for these tasks, FieldWorks has built-in knowledge about the kinds of data that linguists need to store. FLEx is designed specifically to help linguists build a dictionary and develop their understanding of the grammar, as they use it to analyse and interlinearize texts.

Some key points:

  • FieldWorks is a suite like Microsoft Office. FLEx is to FieldWorks what Word is to MS Office.
  • Each program in the suite is for a specific set of tasks a translator/linguist will tackle:
  • Data Notebook - cultural observations and conclusions
  • Language Explorer (FLEx) - lexicon, text analysis, concordance, grammar.
  • Translation Editor - scripture editing, back translation, checking.
  • Unlike MS Office, each of the above programs stores the data you enter in the same database.
  • Development of FieldWorks is ongoing.

There is further information about FieldWorks at www.sil.org/computing/fieldworks/.

A zip file of the data for the course

Session One

Session Two

Session Three

Session Four

Session Five

Session Six

Session Seven

Session Eight