[Air-l] transcription tools?

Christian Nelson cnelson at comm.umass.edu
Mon Nov 24 09:26:53 PST 2003


Karen Lunsford wrote:

>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?
>
NO. Contrary to what has been suggested so far, there is no voice 
recognition software (as its often called) that can transcribe 
interviews directly with any degree of accuracy that would satisfy a 
researcher. Even Dragon Naturally Speaking 7, which is the best out 
there, requires that you speak in a carefully modulated and paced way 
into the microphone or you'll get garbage. Also, while the most 
expensive version of DNS 7 will allow you to use it with more than one 
voice, I am fairly sure that it will only do so one-at-a-time--i.e., it 
won't switch itself back and forth between speaker files every time 
there is speaker change.

>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?
>
I don't think so. But you might also want to ask this on the forum 
linked to and archived at http://www.voicerecognition.com
Less biased responses can also be had on the qual-software list. Be sure 
to check out their archive, as questions like this are asked frequently.
To do this, go to http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/qual-software.html
Best,
Christian Nelson





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