Tips for Transcription

• Current Projects
  
• Why Transcribe?
  
• Tips for Transcribers
  
• Tips for Posting Transcription Jobs

If you need help – ask, there will be someone able to help!!

[If you have further ideas on how transcription can be made easier, open to all suggestions, send me a message :) An0n1nNZ]

Current Projects

• Kendra Wiseman on Peter Boyles
• Jason Beghe Interview with Mark Bunker

Recently Completed Projects

• Astra and Lawrence Woodcraft Interview on Glosslip
• Marc Headley's second interview on Glosslip
• Michael Pattinson and Chuck Beatty Interview on Glosslip
• Jay Marvin interviews Tony Ortega on AM 760
• Andreas Heldal-Lund (Xenu.net) Interview with Glosslip
• Mark Bunker and Jeff Hawkins Interviews with Glosslip
• Marc Headley Interview with Glosslip

Feel free to PM me with job requests :)

Why transcribe?
Transcripts of audio and video files are useful for:

• the hearing-impaired,
  
• people with low-fi internet connections,
• the media,
• translation by other Anonymi,
• people with English as a second language
• and search engines.

Make these valuable resources accessible for all!
There are a number of people who have participated in transcription tasks already, so you are working as part of a team!

Tips for Transcribers
Transcription jobs are hosted in: Translation and Text Composition Projects > English (composition only). Keep an eye out for new jobs – your help is always appreciated!

A useful play-back tool is:Express Scribe Transcription Playback Software, available for FREE! This enables you to play audio files (wav, mp3, au, aif, vox) back at variable speed – slower for when you are transcribing, faster for when you are checking. Playback is controlled by 'hotkeys', so as you type away into Microsoft Word or your favorite editing software you can:
Press [F2] to play back slower
Press [F3] to play back faster
Press [F4] to pause
Press [F7] to rewind
Press [F8] to fast forward
(These are the default keys, you can change to suit yourself).

Use Microsoft Word or your favorite editing software to transcribe into. Make yourself comfortable, start playback (Press [F2] if you have Express Scribe, see above), and type! Put in as much as you can get, if you are not sure on a word or name, double-asterisk (**) it so someone can check it.

Precede each section with initials of who is speaking it. We need to know who has said what, so start each section with who is saying it, initials are usually good enough, e.g. DO: for Dawn Olsen.

It is helpful if you can include timing points, as these can help connect the transcription to the original source, e.g. If someone found a juicy quote in the transcript and wanted to use the video for a TV segment or video they were producing... (I put in [1:00] at one-minute intervals). If you don't, it's not the end of the world – it's getting those words down that matters!

Break your job into smaller, manageable blocks. Can only do one minute at a time? That's fine! Slow and steady gets the job done!! Can sit down for an hour for it?? That's great!! There will be plenty of work to meet your insatiable appetite for transcription!

References. The Scientology Glossary can be useful for looking up words you're not sure on, and soon there should be a list of names in Scientology you may come across.

An example of transcription from posting-to-finish can be seen here.

Tips for posting Transcription jobs
Transcription jobs are hosted in: Translation and Text Composition Projects > English (composition only). If you have some exciting audio or video you want transcribed, you can get some assistance by posting a new thread in this forum.

It is useful to know:

• the purpose of the thread, e.g. to transcribe the Glosslip interview with Marc Headley.
• a source for the media, a link to the audio or video file.
• who is speaking in the media and suitable prefixes, e.g. DO: for Dawn Olsen.
• how long the media is (just so people know what they are dealing with!)

Producing (and updating) a roster is helpful as transcribers can claim a segment to do, so there is no confusion about what has and hasn't been done. Choose a reasonable segment length, 5-10 minutes is quite a chunk, but manageable! A sample roster is below:

Start Time | Transcriber
0:00 -
10:00 -
20:00 -
30:00 -
40:00 -
50:00 -
60:00 - An0n1nNZ
70:00 -
80:00 -
90:00 -

(i.e. An0n1nNZ will transcribe from 60 minutes into the interview, to the end of the sentence around 70 minutes)

Be prepared to edit the segments, or have someone else to do that task. I have produced a 'tidy' transcript that doesn't necessarily include every single word spoken, but is easy to read and less “speaking-language”-like, e.g. Spellchecking the document, Removing phrases like "You know" and "I mean", and pruning sentences to reduce repetition and make more manageable sentences.
The raw transcripts are still important – they need to be referred to for what was actually said!

This is likely to be a large document – a 90 minute interview spawned a 19 page document, so it'll probably need to be hosted as a file, rather than posting it in a message :)

Don't forget to thank everyone – this only comes about through team effort!

Current Projects

• Kendra Wiseman on Peter Boyles
• Jason Beghe Interview with Mark Bunker

Recently Completed Projects

• Astra and Lawrence Woodcraft Interview on Glosslip
• Marc Headley's second interview on Glosslip
• Michael Pattinson and Chuck Beatty Interview on Glosslip
• Jay Marvin interviews Tony Ortega on AM 760
• Andreas Heldal-Lund (Xenu.net) Interview with Glosslip
• Mark Bunker and Jeff Hawkins Interviews with Glosslip
• Marc Headley Interview with Glosslip

Feel free to PM me with job requests :)

If you want to hone your leet transcribing skillz, go to Amazon mechanical turk and grab a task from CastingWords. Read their instructions, and then start transcribing. They want a natural, publishable transcript, not a raw transcript. After you submit a transcript, another Turker will copyedit it and grade you. Try to work your way up to an 8 or 9.

If you hand in a crappy transcript, you'll get a low grade and you'll be disqualified for some jobs, so choose a job you can do confidently. Many of the jobs involve heavy accents. You can return a job if it is harder than you expected.

Is there any advantage over just working on small projects here?

Originally Posted by its.an0nym0us

Is there any advantage over just working on small projects here?

Yes, you get feedback and a feel for what you need to work on when doing transcripts here. And a few cents off a future Amazon purchase.