A runtime framework and authoring tool are provided for enabling linguistic experts to author text normalization maps and grammar libraries without requiring high level of technical or programming skills. Authors define or select terminals, map the terminals, and define rules for the mapping. The tool enables an author to validate their work, by executing the map in the same way the recognition engine does, causing consistency in results from authoring to user operations. The runtime is used by the speech engines and by the tools to provide consistent normalization for supported scenarios.