SearchNEWS & EVENTS
The Texas After Violence Project Seeks Candidates for Executive Director PositionSubmitted by TAVP2007 on Wed, 01/18/2012 - 05:11.
Interim Executive Director Appointed for the Texas After Violence ProjectSubmitted by TAVP2007 on Sun, 09/25/2011 - 21:54.
Witnessing An Execution in Texas: A podcast by Maurice ChammahSubmitted by Virginia Raymond on Sun, 08/14/2011 - 17:24.
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TranscribingTAVP Transcription Style Guide Addendum to Baylor Guide In general, please follow the directions in Style Guide: A Quick Reference for Editing Oral Memoirs, Baylor University Institute for Oral History (Waco: Baylor University Institute for Oral History 2007), http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php?id=14142, last accessed December 9, 2008. There are a few areas in which the Texas After Violence Project transcription style differs from the Baylor style or that we want to clarify. Please read the following guidelines alongside the Baylor Style Guide. Use a clear, 12-point font. Title Page: Please see the Instructions for Texas After Violence Project transcript title page, but use 12-point font rather than 10-point font. The instructions are in 10-point font so to have room for all the explanation. In real life, when you are preparing a transcription, use 12-point font. Here is a sample transcription title page. Break up the transcript into paragraphs. It's extremely difficult to read pages and pages of unbroken text. CHECK YOUR SPELLING. We have accidentally sent out interview transcripts with the beloved deceased person's name spelled incorrectly. This is inexcusable and we must never let him happen again. Abbreviations: In general, please follow the guidelines at page 4 and 5 of the Baylor guide. Additionally, our main concern is to capture the actual sounds that people make in the interview. While we all abbreviate words when we transcribe just so that we can get the words on paper, it’s very important to distinguish between full names or words and abbreviations in representing someone’s speech. In other words, if a speaker pronounces the letters in an abbreviation, please write those letters with periods following each letter. If the narrator says "Ay (as in hay) See El You" - type "A.C.L.U." If the narrator says "You Ess Ay" - type "U.S.A." or "USA" If the narrator says "Day Effay" - type "D.F." If the narrator says "En Ay See See Pea" - type "N.A.C.C.P." If the narrator says "En Double-Ay See Pea" - type "NAACP" If the narrator says "Lou Lack" - type "LULAC" (not L.U.L.A.C.) If the narrator says the "University of Texas at San Antonio" - type "the University of Texas at San Antonio:(not UTSA or U.T.S.A.) If the narrator says "the Texas prison system" - type "the Texas prison system" (not TDCJ or T.D.C.J.) If the narrator says "Distrito Federal" - type "Distrito Federal" (not D.F.) If the narrator says "Supreme Court of the United States" - type "Supreme Court of the United States" (not Supreme Court of the U.S. or S.C.O.T.U.S. or SCOTUS or the Supreme Court) If the narrator says "Court of Criminal Appeals" - type "Court of Criminal Appeals" (not C.C.P.) If the narrator says "League of United Latin American Citizens" - type "League of United Latin American Citizens" (not LULAC) If a person does not pronounce every letter by name in a word or abbreviation, but pronounces the abbreviation as a word, then do not put periods after each letter, but doput the letters in all-caps if a proper name. If the person says "maldef" - type "MALDEF" If the person says "swat" - type "SWAT" (or S.W.A.T.) If the person says "lou lack" - type LULAC Brackets: Please use brackets for only the following purposes: 1) When you cannot understand or hear something on the tape, write [inaudible] 2) After a person has reviewed a draft transcript of her or his interview and asked for material to be deleted, write [material deleted at person’s name’s request]. Then resume the transcription at the point the person has approved to begin again. 3) If, after review of the draft transcription, a person corrects a word (either because of the person’s error in the interview, or because of a transcription error), make the correction in brackets. For example, Draft transcription: Gabe has a cute dog named Pakistan. Corrected transcription after review: Gabe has a cute dog named [India]. Please do not use brackets to indicate other sounds or events in the room. Not: [screeching sound] But: (screeching sound) “Crutch words” (Baylor’s term, p. 8) and FEEDBACK WORDS (Baylor, p.10) We will not transcribe every “uh,” “um,” “you know,” “right,” “like,” “okay,” “pues,” or “este.” It will be something of a judgment call as to how much of these sounds to transcribe, and which ones seem “significant.” The significance of an “um” depends on the reader. Some readers will be most interested in the words, while other readers will find the particular way in which people express themselves in speech very important. Pauses, stuttering, difficulty speaking certain words, inability to remember a particular word or certain words.” A five-minute pause is different from a 30-second pause and both are different from a series of pauses between speech. Similarly, whether a person speaks quickly or softly, in a high register or low register, may be significant for some kinds of analysis. We are not going to transcribe all of this material, however. Neither will we time pauses or describe a person’s rate of speech. A linguist or someone else who needs to know that level of detail must listen to a recording of the interview, because the time and attention required to transcribe audio events at that level of precision is beyond the capacity of the project (at least right now) and would not be appropriate to our purposes. We will transcribe these words and phrases when they appear to indicate affirmation or agreement, disagreement, or a question. For example, Do transcribe this “you know” NARRATOR: You know where Academy used to be on the frontage road to 35? Do not transcribe these “you knows” NARRATOR: I felt, you know, it was, you know, just a bad time for all of us. Do transcribe the “uh-huh” of affirmation: INTERVIEWER: You grew up in Seguin? NARRATOR: Uh-huh, all my life. Do transcribe the “mmmm” of affirmation and appreciation. INTERVIEWER: Mmmm, Tina, this is delicious! Do transcribe the “uh-uh” of negation. INTERVIEWER: Did you go to the execution? NARRATOR: Uh-uh. Do transcribe the “huh?” of communication gone awry. INTERVIEWER: Would you say that your beliefs emerged via of the ideological state apparatus, or would you attribute your mental construct to the gender and generational relations in your extended family, or were your youthful beliefs overdetermined? NARRATOR: Huh? Notice that questions that provoke these kinds of answers are BAD questions. They are overly directed, they are closed, they can be answered with a “yes” or a “no” or some version of “I have no idea what you are talking about.” Use your judgment as to when to transcribe the “um”or “uh” of hesitation. From Baylor Guide (p.10): “When uh is used by the narrator as a stalling device or significant pause, then type uh. But sometimes a person will repeatedly enunciate words ending in a hard consonant with an added, “h,” as in and-uh, at-uh, in-uh. Other examples are to-uh, of-uh, they-uh. In these instances, do not type uh. ** NOTE TO INTERVIEWERS: If you find yourself in an interview where a person is responding with such short answers, this situation could be a sign that you need to change what you are doing. Try prompts such as: Tell me about….. Could you describe….. What sticks in your mind from that day? ADDITIONAL 1) Please take care with spelling. Spell check only recognizes non-existent words, not the wrong word. Learn the differences between the following words and make sure you use the correct one (pay attention to context): counsel - as in lawyers, advice personal - having to do with an individual person (I don't share personal information with strangers.) they're - contraction for "they are" 2) Please do NOT use an apostrophe in the third person non-gendered possessive pronoun. Correct spelling: The university spent all its money on football. 3) Do use an apostrophe for the contraction of it and is. It’s a bloody shame that the library hours have been cut. 4) Please DO use the appropriate accents and other symbols: limón, not limon; cumpleaños, not cumpleanos !; café; etc. 5) Take care to use accents or other marks in proper names, unless you know for a fact that the person does not want the accent. Don’t assume everyone in a family agrees on how to spell the name or whether to use accents; do not assume that the spelling in a newspaper or other document is spelled correctly. Check with the person about how to spell her name. If in doubt, use the accent: Rodríguez, Gutiérrez, José, Simón, María, Nájera. 6) Also please double-check the spelling of names that have multiple spellings (Ann, Anne, Anna, Ana; González, Gonzáles; Louis, Louis; Tony, Toni). If you are not sure of a spelling, please highlight the word or name and we will get the answer. 7) When you can’t make out what someone is saying, please write [inaudible]. Please do not write incomprehensible, because the word is ambiguous and could be understood to mean that the person is not making sense. Use neutral, nonjudgmental language. 8) Codes To maintain the confidentiality of people we interview who have not yet released their interviews to the public, including those who have not yet reviewed and approved the recordings and transcriptions of their interviews, we have a code. The code allows us to talk and write about the interviews, and to provide summaries of our work to date, without releasing anyone’s name. Codes combine the type of interview with the number of that kind of interview: FM-1, FM-2, and so forth. Interviews may fit into more than one category; we will assign a primary category and then list additional categories, where appropriate, but we will not number these additional categories. For example, Larry Daves is coded DL-4; his interview would also fit well into the PA and TxH categories. Listing all of these categories will enable us to create an index in which Larry would come up under PA, but not be double-counted. • F/FM Family member/intimate friend of person murdered or executed This page updated 17 August 2011 |