Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / January 2005

There's a third possibility. Linguists have a variety of transcription
tools, but they all involve simplifying the process of listening,
sometimes repeatedly, to recordings. If you make a digital recording,
you can use a variety of waveform display programs that let you
highlight subsections, play them, and write your transcription to a
time-aligned tier. Praat, for instance, while it does so much more (most
of which is probably unnecessary for your purposes), would let you
delineate utterances on one tier, transcribe them on another, and then,
via a macro, export the transcription of each utterance to a text file,
together with a time-stamp (how many seconds into your file the
utterance starts). You'd also be able to define an additional tier, for
comments about whatever you want to comment on. There are undoubtedly
other tools that would let you do this, perhaps with built-ins replacing
the macro you'd have to define, but this is the program that I'm
familiar with.

Several of our researchers have had good luck making recordings with a
Marantz digital recorder, in WAV format. This recorder writes the files
to one of the flash cards, which can be read by an off-the-shelf card
reader. As a result, getting the files on to a laptop is a piece of
cake, just a regular copying operation in the finder. Another researcher
has made decent recordings with a mini-disc. But, unless you get a
"professional" level recorder, you lose one of the major advantages of
using mini-disc. The consumer recorders only have analog output, so
getting the files to your computer involves digital-to-analog *and*
analog-to-digital conversions. Aside from the loss of recording quality,
this takes a lot of time.

Not possible. No speech recognition software can transcribe a stranger's
voice - that's not how it works. See my reviews of ViaVoice and iListen
in TidBITS to learn how it does work. The only speech that speech
recognition software can transcribe is yours, because you've trained it
extensively, and you must speak directly to it.

Uck. What I would do is something in between. First, I'd use dictation /
transcription *software*. This puts the business of repeating sections
of the recording into the computer, so you're using the mouse and
keyboard, not foot pedals. There are many interesting possibilities; you
might look at Listen & Type:

http://www.nattaworks.com/english.html

or at LoopyLoop:

http://www.loopyloop.com/pages/547871/index.htm

There are others, too - this why there is Google and versiontracker. Go
out and find one that suits you.

Anyhow, having gotten some dictation software of that sort, I would then
use it to transcribe the interviews. Here, a mixture of typing and
speech recognition could be used, e.g. listen to a stretch of what the
interviewee said, then say it yourself, to your speech recognition
software, as a way of entering it as text.

I believe that part of what you are asking is how accurate speech
recognition is these days. In general, I would have to say that its
accuracy is quite astonishing. Naturally, things become tricky as your
vocabulary becomes more specialized. And you must take the time to train
your speech recognition software, and you must be alert enough to permit
it to train you. If you are willing to do that, I think you will find
speech recognition software to be little short of miraculous. This
entire paragraph  was entered using only my voice, and as you can see,
no mistakes were made. Actually, I did have to make one correction: the
computer incorrectly capitalized one word. But it made far fewer
mistakes then I would have made typing the same material manually.

m.

I record a lot of interviews and frequently have to  transcribe small
portions by hand.

I use an Olympus DS-330 ($130 at my local Best Buy electronics store).
It is a small handheld digital recorder. You can get an attachment to
use it for telephone interviews through the Olympus web site and
probably at a Radio Shack. But I've not tried one of these.

The recorder comes with software for the PC and the Mac so that you
can download your audio into the computer and listen to it through the
computer while you transcribe. This software also helps you organize
and store the audio on the computer.

The recorder holds 2.5 to 5 hours of audio, depending on the quality
setting you pick. If the subject is near the recorder, speaks loudly
and clearly and there are few extraneous sounds, you probably can use
the long-play, lower-quality setting with no problem. You should
experiment with the player to learn the best settings for your needs
before you take it into the field.

I've used it on my desktop WinXP machine, a laptop Win2000 machine,
and on my iBook G4 with OSX 10.3.x.

I found the recorder to be extremely helpful, one of the best tools
I've ever bought for my work. Note, however, that the playback
software is better on Windows than on the Mac.

On the Windows side, when you are listening to the audio, you can use
the function keys on the computer keyboard to control the playback
while you are transcribing it in a word processor.  It's very easy,
while, say, typing in Word, to just reach up and press a function key
to pause, rewind a little, fast-forward, slow down the playback, speed
up the playback, etc.

The function keys don't work on the Mac version.

On the Mac side, if you need to pause or rewind, etc., you have to
switch back-and-forth between the word processor and the audio
software. And you have to take a hand off the keyboard and use the
mouse or trackpad to press the on-screen buttons through the software.
Somewhere I saw some documentation that claimed you can use the
function keys on the Mac side, but I have yet to make this work. I've
tried. This flaw takes away about half the usefulness of the system on
a Mac.

The only alternative I've found is to buy an add-on footpedal from
Olympus. It would plug into the Mac and you can use that to control
playback. But I've not done that.

Yup, I'm afraid Matt's right in his reply to you.  Can't be done.
Speech Recognition (SR) software requires a lot of effort just to get it
to understand your single voice under perfect conditions.  Then ruin
that sound quality by running it through a recorder and things get
tougher.  But introduce another voice that the software isn't tuned for,
and forget it.

I doubt there's any way around recording and manually transcribing the
interviews.  Whether you record it digitally or analog, and whether you
type it on a computer or a typewriter, it's still gonna be the same
process of listen-type-listen-type-listen-type, catch your breath, drink
some coffee, stretch your aching back, listen-type-listen-type, etc.

I'm sure a zillion other doctoral students, especially in the social
sciences and humanities, have faced the same issue.  Talk to them.

-- Josh

For a heavy workload of manually transcribing tapes, well worth the cost.

I use a TMP-636S from dynametric.com.  It hooks directly in line with your
telephone and sends output to the microphone jack of a computer or a tape
recorder.  But I've never used a software form of a transcriber; only manual.

THANK YOU to everyone who has responded with their advice and input.  I
can't tell you how helpful your suggestions have been.  You've probably
saved me a whole lot of time, money and frustration.

I posted this query in a few different places--here, plus a newsgroup
for medical transcriptionists, and a bulletin board for people doing
research similar to mine.  Here's a summary of the main points I
gathered from all the responses:

Using speech recognition software to transcribe interviews with
multiple interviewees sounds great, but it probably won't work in the
real world.  There were widely differing opinions on the speech
recognition software in general--some people think it's all rudimentary
and flawed at best, some say it can be surprisingly accurate and
useful--but several people pointed out that a lot depends on training
it to work with your own voice and speech patterns.  It's just not
likely to perform well with recordings of many different speakers--the
amount of time you'd spend correcting and cleaning up the output will
probably negate the time you'd save on the initial data entry.  Some
people suggested playing back the recordings of the interviews and
repeating them in chunks in my own voice into the computer's
microphone, but that doesn't really sound like a viable option to
me--it seems too time-consuming to be much of a time-saver, for one
thing.

Several people said they prefer digital recorders over cassettes
because you get better quality recordings.  One person said that
digital recorders can pick up lower-volume speech that cassette
recorders can't.  A few people said that even lower-end digital
recorders produce good results on the highest-quality recording mode
(several people recommended recording only in that mode).   But a major
limitation on the cheaper models is storage space--you may not be able
to fit all of a long interview in the high-quality mode in the storage
capacity they offer.  One person recommended a higher-end model for
this reason, preferably with removable storage media.  Several people
mentioned Olympus as a good brand (and I can attest that they have good
tech support--I called them the other day with some questions about
their products, and the person I talked with was extremely helpful and
knowledgeable).  One person did point out that it's easier to lose (or
accidentally delete) a digital recording file than it is to erase a
whole interview on tape.

Several people recommended investing in a really good microphone--not
the one that came with the recorder.  One person suggested getting a
two-channel recorder and separate microphones for you and your
interviewee, so you can separate voices when both of you speak at once
(she said she learned this from a journalist who does interviews for a
living).  If you're using just one mic, another person recommended
using a tabletop model, since a lapel mic on your interviewee may not
pick up your voice as well.  He also pointed out that you and your
interviewee aren't tethered to a tabletop mic, and can just walk away
from it if necessary without being unhooked.  He said that his tabletop
mic--a Sony ECM-R100 with "boundary effect" and a "noise reduction"
setting--worked very well.  Still another person said he thinks the
built-in microphones in current-model digital recorders are very good
and an add-on mic isn't necessary.

Several people emphasized the importance of taping the interviews in a
quiet setting, as free from background noise as possible (several
strongly recommended against coffee houses, bars, restaurants and other
public locations, and one warned about noise from wind, air
conditioning, etc. that you won't hear, but the microphone will).
Recordings with less junk in the background are easier to transcribe,
and if you're paying someone to do it for you, you'll end up paying
them less.

For recording a telephone conversation, one person recommended the
TMP-636S from Dynametric.com. It plugs directly into your phone line
and sends output to the microphone jack of a computer or a tape
recorder.  He said it works on Windows or Mac (although the company's
website only mentions PC).  NextWaveSolutions.com also makes a
Telephone Record Coupler (#TRX2035B) that does the same thing.

Lots of people recommended a playback device with foot pedal controls
(the professional transcriptionists think you'd be crazy not to use
one).  You can get these to use with both cassette and digital
recordings.  Many people suggested looking for a used one on eBay, and
selling it there when you're done.

Opinions among the researchers about paying a transcriptionist were
mixed.  Some said that doing it yourself lets you immerse yourself in
the data in a way that's invaluable to the analysis.  Others were glad
they'd found the money to invest a transcriptionist, and didn't think
they missed anything of value in letting go of that task.  Some said
that what they got from the transcriptionist was really a first draft,
and they spent a fair amount of time correcting and polishing it, so
they got plenty familiar with the data in that process.

A couple of the transcriptionists recommended word expansion software,
like SpellCatcher.  With this program, besides the spell checking
functions, you can create shortcuts that let you type in a few letters
or a short abbreviation, and it automatically expands this into a
longer word or phrase.  I can imagine this being very handy for some of
the cumbersome and repetitive terminology that a lot of us use in our
writing.  It's available for Mac and Windows from
http://www.rainmakerinc.com/.  They have a 15-day free trial download
on the website, and the full version is $40.  I'm going to try it.

And finally, one person pointed out that at least one qualitative data
analysis program--HyperResearch for the Mac--lets you code audio
recordings directly, without having to transcribe the entire interview.
You'd only have to type the utterances you were quoting directly in
your paper.

I hope all this is as helpful to others here as it has been to me!