Transcription Mode is a mode designed to increase the speed and efficiency of transcription work. The interface is keyboard-driven and minimizes UI actions. All annotations of a certain tier type are displayed in a vertical list for easy visual access. Transcription mode brings down the transcription work to the bare essentials: listen/watch, type, listen/watch, type, listen/watch, type.
Note. Transcription mode presupposes that the initial segmentation of the recording is already done. The rationale for this is that the most efficient workflow for transcribing large amounts of linguistic data is a two-step process: first segmenting the recording into turns —also attributing turns to the appropriate speaker— (this can be done in Annotation mode or in the special purpose Segmentation mode), and then transcribing and translating these turns.
If you go to Transcription mode for the first time, a Settings dialog will come up. Here you can select the thier tier types and the number of columns. Note that you select tier types, not individual tiers. This is because Transcription mode displays all annotations on all tiers of a certain type in a vertical column.
For the purposes of this description we will asssume that the user is working with a file that has six main tier types: po (practical orthography)
, dt (detailed transcript), (literal translation)
, tf (free translation), tn (translation in lingua franca)
, and vb (visible behaviour)
. Our example file contains tiers of these types for two participants, and the overall tier structure looks like this (tier names in bold, tier types in courier
):
In our example, we choose the type po (practical orthography)
as the first column. We can leave it at that if we just want to work on the transcript. Or we can display up to four columns next to the primary one — for instance the free translations and/or a literal translation and/or detailed transcript and/or translation in lingua franca.
For rest of the columns we can only select tier types that are time-aligned with the first using the stereotype “Symbolic Assocation”. In our example, we can select dt (detailed transcript)/(literal translation)
/ tf (free translation)/ tn (translation in lingua franca
)
for other columns. We cannot choose the tier type vb (visible behaviour)
here, because it is not time-aligned with our primary column.
Having selected the tier types we want, we click “Apply”. Now the chosen tier types are displayed in vertical columns, and the two largest differences from the default Annotation mode become visible: (i) all annotations are displayed vertically (top to bottom) rather than horizontally (left to right), and (ii) columns display all annotations of a certain type. For instance, the po (practical orthography)
column displays turns from both speakers A and B.
Note. Transcription mode presupposes that you use linguistic types to differentiate the types of information in your tiers. Thus the linguistic type of your free translation tier should be different from the linguistic type of your main transcription. This is necessary for any serious corpus work anyway — for instance, ELAN’s multiple layer search also relies on this. If you haven’t been using linguistic types yet, consider investing the time to bring your files up to speed. This will not only let you use Transcription mode, it will also allow complex corpus searches and in general make your data more structured. The best way to enforce proper use of linguistic types across your files is to use a template.
Transcription mode is built for high-speed transcription work. It plays automatically so that you can start typing right away. You can hit TAB to replay, and if you finish typing you hit ENTER, which brings you to the next annotation, which is played automatically so that you can start typing right away… and so on. Transcription mode boils down the transcription process to the two most essential actions: listening and typing. Once you’ve set it up, you don’t need to worry about anything else.
You can use Transcription mode to do initial transcription of a segmented recording. For this you would use the simplest, one-column setup. You can also use it to work on translations if you already have transcriptions. For this you would display both tier types side by side. And of course you can do the transcription and translation work in one go. For this you would use the two-column setup and check the option to “Navigate across columns”.
The basic philosophy of Transcription mode is to make things as easy as possible for the transcriber. For instance, it will silently create child annotations if they don’t exist yet. You just have to make sure the relevant tiers exist for all participants and Transcription mode takes care of the rest.
Typing and playing back
Moving around
Navigate across columns
setting controls whether you go down within a column or you move across columns (from left to right).Using the mouse
The layout of the transcription mode is designed to replicate the best aspects of a word processor and a spreadsheet – all the while allowing you access to the time-aligned video and audio signals.
We hope you enjoy this addition to the Elan toolset. It is designed to cut down on the many hours it takes to do detailed transcriptions and we feel that you will find it an indispensable part of your workflow.