Transcription (linguistics)

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Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of spoken language in written form. The source can either be utterances (speech or sign language ) or preexisting text in another writing system.

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Transcription should not be confused with translation, which means representing the meaning of text from a source-language in a target language, (e.g. Los Angeles (from source-language Spanish) means The Angels in the target language English); or with transliteration, which means representing the spelling of a text from one script to another.

In the academic discipline of linguistics, transcription is an essential part of the methodologies of (among others) phonetics, conversation analysis, dialectology, and sociolinguistics. It also plays an important role for several subfields of speech technology. Common examples for transcriptions outside academia are the proceedings of a court hearing such as a criminal trial (by a court reporter) or a physician's recorded voice notes (medical transcription). This article focuses on transcription in linguistics.

Phonetic and orthographic transcription

There are two main types of linguistic transcription. Phonetic transcription focuses on phonetic and phonological properties of spoken language. Systems for phonetic transcription thus furnish rules for mapping individual sounds or phones to written symbols. Systems for orthographic transcription, by contrast, consist of rules for mapping spoken words onto written forms as prescribed by the orthography of a given language. Phonetic transcription operates with specially defined character sets, usually the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The type of transcription chosen depends mostly on the context of usage. Because phonetic transcription strictly foregrounds the phonetic nature of language, it is mostly used for phonetic or phonological analyses. Orthographic transcription, however, has a morphological and a lexical component alongside the phonetic component (which aspect is represented to which degree depends on the language and orthography in question). This form of transcription is thus more convenient wherever semantic aspects of spoken language are transcribed. Phonetic transcription is more systematic in a scientific sense, but it is also more difficult to learn, more time-consuming to carry out and less widely applicable than orthographic transcription.

As a theory

Mapping spoken language onto written symbols is not as straightforward a process as may seem at first glance. Written language is an idealization, made up of a limited set of clearly distinct and discrete symbols. Spoken language, on the other hand, is a continuous (as opposed to discrete) phenomenon, made up of a potentially unlimited number of components. There is no predetermined system for distinguishing and classifying these components and, consequently, no preset way of mapping these components onto written symbols.

Literature is relatively consistent in pointing out the nonneutrality of transcription practices. There is not and cannot be a neutral transcription system. Knowledge of social culture enters directly into the making of a transcript. They are captured in the texture of the transcript (Baker, 2005).

Transcription systems

Transcription systems are sets of rules which define how spoken language is to be represented in written symbols. Most phonetic transcription systems are based on the International Phonetic Alphabet or, especially in speech technology, on its derivative SAMPA.

Examples for orthographic transcription systems (all from the field of conversation analysis or related fields) are:

CA (conversation analysis)

Arguably the first system of its kind, originally sketched in (Sacks et al. 1978), later adapted for the use in computer readable corpora as CA-CHAT by (MacWhinney 2000). The field of Conversation Analysis itself includes a number of distinct approaches to transcription and sets of transcription conventions. These include, among others, Jefferson Notation. To analyze conversation, recorded data is typically transcribed into a written form that is agreeable to analysts. There are two common approaches. The first, called narrow transcription, captures the details of conversational interaction such as which particular words are stressed, which words are spoken with increased loudness, points at which the turns-at-talk overlap, how particular words are articulated, and so on. If such detail is less important, perhaps because the analyst is more concerned with the overall gross structure of the conversation or the relative distribution of turns-at-talk amongst the participants, then a second type of transcription known as broad transcription may be sufficient (Williamson, 2009).

Jefferson Transcription System

The Jefferson Transcription System is a set of symbols, developed by Gail Jefferson, which is used for transcribing talk. Having had some previous experience in transcribing when she was hired in 1963 as a clerk typist at the UCLA Department of Public Health to transcribe sensitivity-training sessions for prison guards, Jefferson began transcribing some of the recordings that served as the materials out of which Harvey Sacks' earliest lectures were developed. Over four decades, for the majority of which she held no university position and was unsalaried, Jefferson's research into talk-in-interaction has set the standard for what became known as conversation analysis (CA). Her work has greatly influenced the sociological study of interaction, but also disciplines beyond, especially linguistics, communication, and anthropology. [1] This system is employed universally by those working from the CA perspective and is regarded as having become a near-globalized set of instructions for transcription. [2]

DT (discourse transcription)

A system described in (DuBois et al. 1992), used for transcription of the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE), later developed further into DT2.

GAT (Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem – Conversation analytic transcription system)

A system described in (Selting et al. 1998), later developed further into GAT2 (Selting et al. 2009), widely used in German speaking countries for prosodically oriented conversation analysis and interactional linguistics. [3] [4]

HIAT (Halbinterpretative Arbeitstranskriptionen – Semiinterpretative working transcriptions)

Arguably the first system of its kind, originally described in (Ehlich and Rehbein 1976) – see (Ehlich 1992) for an English reference - adapted for the use in computer readable corpora as (Rehbein et al. 2004), and widely used in functional pragmatics. [5] [6] [7]

Software

Transcription was originally a process carried out manually, i.e. with pencil and paper, using an analogue sound recording stored on, e.g., a Compact Cassette. Nowadays, most transcription is done on computers. Recordings are usually digital audio files or video files, and transcriptions are electronic documents. Specialized computer software exists to assist the transcriber in efficiently creating a digital transcription from a digital recording.

Two types of transcription software can be used to assist the process of transcription: one that facilitates manual transcription and the other automated transcription. For the former, the work is still very much done by a human transcriber who listens to a recording and types up what is heard in a computer, and this type of software is often a multimedia player with functionality such as playback or changing speed. For the latter, automated transcription is achieved by a speech-to-text engine which converts audio or video files into electronic text. Some of the software would also include the function of annotation. [8]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Phonetic Alphabet</span> System of phonetic notation

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation of speech sounds in written form. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech–language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators.

In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme is a set of phones that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.

In phonetics, a phone is any distinct speech sound or gesture, regardless of whether the exact sound is critical to the meanings of words.

Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:

Phonetic transcription is the visual representation of speech sounds by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conversation analysis</span> Approach to the study of social interaction

Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction that empirically investigates the mechanisms by which humans achieve mutual understanding. It focuses on both verbal and non-verbal conduct, especially in situations of everyday life. CA originated as a sociological method, but has since spread to other fields. CA began with a focus on casual conversation, but its methods were subsequently adapted to embrace more task- and institution-centered interactions, such as those occurring in doctors' offices, courts, law enforcement, helplines, educational settings, and the mass media, and focus on multimodal and nonverbal activity in interaction, including gaze, body movement and gesture. As a consequence, the term conversation analysis has become something of a misnomer, but it has continued as a term for a distinctive and successful approach to the analysis of interactions. CA and ethnomethodology are sometimes considered one field and referred to as EMCA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voiced labial–palatal approximant</span> Consonantal sound represented by ⟨ɥ⟩ in IPA

The voiced labial–palatalapproximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It has two constrictions in the vocal tract: with the tongue on the palate, and rounded at the lips. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɥ⟩, a rotated lowercase letter ⟨h⟩, or occasionally ⟨jʷ⟩, which indicates with a different kind of rounding.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wylie transliteration</span> Method for transliterating Tibetan script

Wylie transliteration is a method for transliterating Tibetan script using only the letters available on a typical English-language typewriter. The system is named for the American scholar Turrell V. Wylie, who created the system and published it in a 1959 Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies article. It has subsequently become a standard transliteration scheme in Tibetan studies, especially in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marshallese language</span> Micronesian language of the Marshall Islands

Marshallese, also known as Ebon, is a Micronesian language spoken in the Marshall Islands. The language of the Marshallese people, it is spoken by nearly all of the country's population of 59,000, making it the principal language. There are also roughly 27,000 Marshallese citizens residing in the United States, nearly all of whom speak Marshallese, as well as residents in other countries such as Nauru and Kiribati.

Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American anthropologists and language scientists for the phonetic and phonemic transcription of indigenous languages of the Americas and for languages of Europe. It is still commonly used by linguists working on, among others, Slavic, Uralic, Semitic languages and for the languages of the Caucasus, of India, and of much of Africa; however, Uralists commonly use a variant known as the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet</span> Disordered speech additions to the phonetic alphabet

The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA, are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the International Phonetic Alphabet for the phonetic transcription of disordered speech. Some of the symbols are used for transcribing features of normal speech in IPA transcription, and are accepted as such by the International Phonetic Association.

A pronunciation respelling for English is a notation used to convey the pronunciation of words in the English language, which do not have a phonemic orthography.

John Local, BA, Ph.D., is a British phonetician and Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at the University of York. He was one of the creators of the experimental Yorktalk non-segmental speech synthesis system which employed techniques of Firthian Prosodic Analysis (FPA), an approach to phonology developed by J.R. Firth and members of the London School of linguistics. His book Doing Phonology written with John Kelly provides a radical contemporary take on FPA. Arising out of work which combined detailed phonetic analysis and Conversation Analysis his recent research has explored the interactional functioning of phonetic detail and phonetic variation in talk-in-interaction. According to Ford and Couper-Kuhlen (2004), Local's work 'has been seminal in founding a phonology for conversation. ... his studies have revealed dimensions of patterned sound production in talk-in-interaction hitherto unfathomed' (2004:13).

Gail Jefferson was an American sociologist with an emphasis in sociolinguistics. She was, along with Harvey Sacks and Emanuel Schegloff, one of the founders of the area of research known as conversation analysis (CA). She is remembered for the methods and notational conventions she developed for transcribing speech, the latter forming the Jefferson Transcription System. This is now used widely in CA research.

A speech corpus is a database of speech audio files and text transcriptions. In speech technology, speech corpora are used, among other things, to create acoustic models. In linguistics, spoken corpora are used to do research into phonetic, conversation analysis, dialectology and other fields.

In linguistics, a prosodic unit is a segment of speech that occurs with specific prosodic properties. These properties can be those of stress, intonation, or tonal patterns.

Interactional linguistics (IL) is an interdisciplinary approach to grammar and interaction in the field of linguistics, that applies the methods of Conversation Analysis to the study of linguistic structures, including syntax, phonetics, morphology, and so on. Interactional linguistics is based on the principle that linguistic structures and uses are formed through interaction and it aims at understanding how languages are shaped through interaction. The approach focuses on temporality, activity implication and embodiment in interaction. Interactional linguistics asks research questions such as "How are linguistic patterns shaped by interaction?" and "How do linguistic patterns themselves shape interaction?".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Writing system</span> Convention of symbols representing language

A writing system comprises a particular set of symbols, called a script, as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. Writing systems can generally be classified according to how symbols function according to these rules, with the most common types being alphabets, syllabaries, and logographies. Alphabets use symbols called letters that correspond to spoken phonemes. Abjads generally only have letters for consonants, while pure alphabets have letters for both consonants and vowels. Abugidas use characters that correspond to consonant–vowel pairs. Syllabaries use symbols called syllabograms to represent syllables or moras. Logographies use characters that represent semantic units, such as words or morphemes.

Orthographic transcription is a transcription method that employs the standard spelling system of each target language.

Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen is an American linguist and distinguished professor (emeritus) from the University of Helsinki.

References

  1. ↑ "Gail Jefferson Obituary • 1938-2008 • Quotes from authorities, colleagues, friends". gail-jefferson.com. Archived from the original on 2015-02-09.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  2. ↑ Davidson, C. (2007). Independent writing in current approaches to writing instruction: What have we overlooked? English Teaching: Practice and Critique. Volume 6, Number 1.
  3. ↑ Selting, Margret / Auer, Peter / Barden, Birgit / Bergmann, Jörg / Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth / Günthner, Susanne / Meier, Christoph / Quasthoff, Uta / Schlobinski, Peter / Uhmann, Susanne (1998): Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem (GAT). In: Linguistische Berichte 173, 91-122.
  4. ↑ Selting, M., Auer, P., Barth-Weingarten, D., Bergmann, J., Bergmann, P., Birkner, K., Couper-Kuhlen, E., Deppermann, A., Gilles, P., Günthner, S., Hartung, M., Kern, F., Mertzlufft, C., Meyer, C., Morek, M., Oberzaucher, F., Peters, J., Quasthoff, U., Schütte, W., Stukenbrock, A., Uhmann, S. (2009): Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem 2 (GAT 2). In: Gesprächsforschung (10), 353-402.
  5. ↑ Ehlich, K. (1992). HIAT - a Transcription System for Discourse Data. In: Edwards, Jane / Lampert, Martin (eds.): Talking Data – Transcription and Coding in Discourse Research. Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 123-148.
  6. ↑ Ehlich, K. & Rehbein, J. (1976) Halbinterpretative Arbeitstranskriptionen (HIAT). In: Linguistische Berichte (45), 21-41.
  7. ↑ Rehbein, J.; Schmidt, T.; Meyer, B.; Watzke, F. & Herkenrath, A. (2004) Handbuch für das computergestützte Transkribieren nach HIAT. In: Arbeiten zur Mehrsprachigkeit, Folge B (56).
  8. ↑ Chen, Yu-Hua; Bruncak, Radovan (2019). "Transcribear – Introducing a secure online transcription and annotation tool". Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. 35 (2): 265–275. doi:10.1093/llc/fqz016.

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