: Writing accented dialog guides? I was wondering if anyone was aware of a quality guide or text translator that would allow for realistic accented dialog speech? Say I wanted to write a character

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The best way to write dialogue in different accents is to hear your characters speak with those accents in your own head, first.

That said, there are some differences that are well documented:

Spelling, as you've mentioned.
Vocabulary, e.g. Apartment (US) vs Flat (UK), Sidewalk (US) vs Pavement (UK).
Prepositions, e.g. On the weekend (US) vs At the weekend (UK).
Past Tense. Americans tend to use the past simple when describing something that has recently occurred, while people in the UK are more likely to use the present perfect. e.g. I went to the store (US) vs I’ve been to the shop (UK).
Irregular Verbs. e.g. leaped, dreamed, burned, learned (US) vs leapt, dreamt, burnt, learnt (UK)

There are numerous others.

One thing to watch out for is that people in both countries tend to emulate the speech patterns of the other. American TV and films are popular in the UK, and they have had a significant effect on the language. Moreover, when Americans and Brits talk to each other, their speech patterns tend to be more similar than when they are apart.

Something else worth mentioning is that there isn't a British accent, nor a US accent; there are many. Here in the UK, accent can vary considerably between people from different parts of the country, as well as by age, social background, education, context, and who a person is talking to. These differences are sufficiently pronounced that locals can often tell which part of town someone is from. As a result, a native can guess a lot about a person's back story from the way they talk. (I imagine a similar thing occurs in the US - even as a Brit, I can tell the difference between speech from, say, Texas and California.

The past is, as they say, a foreign country, so the way my parents talked at my age is different from the way I talk.

Interestinly, if someone moves (physically or socially) they're likely to take on speech patterns of their new neighbours, but revert to older patterns when they meet people from their original background.

One consequence of all this is that it is easy to get it wrong. Every Brit knows how jarring it can be when a non-British actor plays an Englishman, but they get the accent wrong. The English just don't say, "What-ho chaps!" these days.

If you're really stuck, your best bet might be to ask natives of each country to check your writing to verify that it seems natural to them.

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Focus on

words
phrasing

Most readers find reading dialog that contains accent very annoying.
There are many words that are regional.
For example, if I read one sentence like the following, I figure it is a British person speaking.
"I'm going to go to the pub, whilst you finish up your work."
This makes for much better reading.
Just read a couple of sentences from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and I'm sure you'll agree that reading accented dialog gets old quick.

But it didn’t budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says:
“De man ain’t asleep—he’s dead. You hold still—I’ll go en see.”
He went, and
bent down and looked, and says:
“It’s a dead man. Yes, indeedy;
naked, too. He’s ben shot in de back. I reck’n he’s ben dead two er
three days. Come in, Huck, but doan’ look at his face—it’s too
gashly.”

However, there is also, an example of phrasing and word use in Huckleberry Finn that shows how that can be employed while still allowing the reading to be smooth.

I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the
island that I’d found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got
to it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a
mile wide. This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about
forty foot high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was
so steep and the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all
over it, and by and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to
the top on the side towards Illinois.

That's much more readable (makes the reader stop and work things out much less) but still provides the reader with the regional feel of Huck's dialog.
If you concentrate on the words used and creating phrasing -- sentence length etc. you'll see that your dialog will be very readable and enjoyable for the reader and yet still convey the regional flare.

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