[Air-l] transcription tools?

[Karen Lunsford]

Hello AoIR members, 

I'm hoping to hear that ethnographic transcription tools have advanced 
miraculously since I last was transcribing tapes.  Does anyone know whether it 
is now possible to have voice recognition (or other) software transcribe 
interview tapes directly?  For example, if I have a digital or analog 
recording, is there anything out there that can provide even a rough 
transcription of it automatically?  perhaps like closed captioning?

In the past, I've used Dragon Naturally Speaking to help me transcribe analog 
audio cassette tapes.  To do this, I listened to the tape using a regular foot-
pedal transcription machine and then repeated everything that I heard into the 
microphone attached to the computer.  That way, it didn't matter that I had 
multiple voices on the tape and that I didn't have each speaker train the 
software to recognize his/her voice (not a possibility).  Dragon was trained 
to recognize my voice, and my re-voicing of everything could produce 
acceptable first passes of the transcript.  Then, I could go back to edit.  
Saved some time, but more important, it saved some of the repetitive motions 
of typing.

Does anyone know of a better technique now?  And/or are there tools other than 
voice recognition available?  

Thanks,
Karen
-- 
Karen Lunsford, Assistant Professor of Writing
Writing Program
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3010
klunsford at writing.ucsb.edu
805-893-8556