The joys of transcription

Oh yes, it’s that time again. First time I did it in the park under a tree. Second time I did it on a yacht in between some Croatian islands in the hot hours of the afternoon. This year, I’m stuck in my office (and thus have access to the web) and am therefore sharing a couple of my favourite tools for transcription. (Yes, i really mean it, the interviews for last year’s M.Sc dissertation were indeed transcribed on a yacht. It was quite nice actually, especially because I was limited to however long the battery would last on my laptop, which was about 1.5 to 2 hours, and then had to wait for next time we were in harbour and I could charge it up – thus giving a semblance of productivity while reducing the guilt factor.)

Surprisingly few people I’ve talked to are aware of the tools that are freely available to reduce the pain of transcription – as much as you can possibly reduce such a thing. There are two tools that I currently use – for different purposes. I have no foot pedal or other specialised equipment – if you do, this may not be relevant to your needs.

The first tool I use is Transcriber, which is good for well.. your bread-and-butter getting from sound to text. It’s open source, so free to use, and has several useful features. Firstly it gives you a visual representation of the sound file along which your pointer moves, so that you can actually see when someone starts talking. That’s very useful for orienting yourself on a micro level and helps you to chunk up the recording more precisely. The chunking up is a second useful feature. Each time you press Enter, Transcriber inserts a break point in the transcript – and you can move between the break points by using arrow keys. I use break points for every turn in the interview, so that I can quickly jump between questions and answers for example. The programme also allows you to create any number of speakers and to assign a speaker to each turn as you go along – very useful when you’ve got 3 kids talking all at the same time (in case you actually manage to distinguish what any of them are saying). Finally, Transcriber allows you to alt+arrow a second or so in each direction of your current position – useful for hearing that elusive word again and again.

I am aware that there are loads of similar products out there to be had, but I’ve tried quite a few of them and never found one just as easy to use and having the features that I want (obviously this is a matter of preference, I’m just stating mine). There are certain draw backs to Transcriber – such as having to export and tidy up your trancsript when you’ve got to the (sweet) end of the recording. Since you’re typing in to Transcriber and not into your word editor of choice, you’ll need to export the transcript to HTML, copy and paste it over, and then spend some time formatting. Another quirk I’ve found is that when I convert my WMA files to MP3 (since Transcriber is somewhat limited on formats) i need to convert it in mono, or it’s going to sound scratchy in Transcriber. But I’d say it’s worth it – once you’ve got it set up, it does save you an awful lot of time – and it’s free.

The second tool that I’m currently using is a Mac-only tool called Global Transcribe which aids transcription of both audio and video by letting you play back your media in VLC player and use a global shortcut to stop and start your file from anywhere. It lacks all the visual tricks and segmenting that I like in Transcriber, so I don’t use it for primary transcription. I have, on the other hand, got a job where we’ve outsourced the transcription. Here I need to listen through the interviews and read through the transcription to pick up on any mistakes the transcriber may have made (where it was impossible for her to pick up technical vocab for example, but which makes instant sense to me). That’s where Global Transcribe comes in handy – I open the transcription up in Word and the sound file in VLC and then occasionally stop it (while being tabbed into Word, thus the global shortcut thing) to correct an error. Very efficient and a great time saver – and again: for free.

The same company do other free transcription tools, both for Mac and Windows, but I haven’t found them as useful as Transcriber – try them out, see what you think. I hope this has been helpful fome someone out there!