Re: advice on transcribing for a struggling grad student

From: CyberCafe (pkbk_at_badger.tds.net)
Date: 12/31/04 

Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 13:28:10 -0600

MaryMc wrote:

> I'm not a medical transcriptionist, I'm a grad student in education,
> about to start on my dissertation research. But I figure that y'all
> could be a great source of advice on the technology I need to record
> and transcribe the interviews I'll be doing. Forgive me if my
> cluelessness about this stuff shows--that's why I'm coming to you
> folks! Any advice you can offer (other than just hiring one of y'all
> to do the transcribing--I wish I could afford that, but it's not in
> this student's budget!) will be much appreciated.
>
> I expect to be doing a dozen or more one-on-one interviews, some in
> person and some by telephone. They will probably last in the
> neighborhood of 1-4 hours each. There won't be a lot of technical
> terms or arcane jargon involved. I'm planning to record them in some
> form and transcribe them into Word documents. I use a Macintosh
> PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz, running OS 10.3.7, with 1 GB of memory.
>
> As I see it, I have two options:
>
> --Get a digital voice recorder and speech recognition software, and
> have my computer do the transcribing (realizing that, if this is even
> do-able, I'll have to do some significant editing and cleanup of the
> transcripts it produces); or

Voice recognition could work with your voice, but for the voices of the
guests, which you will not be able to train on your voice recognition
software, you would have to do what some court reporters do; that is,
repeat everything that is said (by your guests) into the voice recognition
software. A steno mask might help you with that process.

> --Get a dictation machine with foot pedals and type in the suckers
> myself.
>
> Obviously, the first approach has the potential to save me a lot of
> work--*IF* it works as planned. Has anybody out there done this? I'd
> really like to hear about your experiences. In particular, can you
> tell me:

I've thought about it, but there's a certain point (because of fast typing
speed of the individual) where it's apparently not worth it. In other
words, some people can type just as fast as what they can produce with
voice recognition. If you've looked at the price of the software, it might
actually be less costly to have a transcription service transcribe your
project or at least some of it.

> --Did you use MacSpeech, Inc.'s iListen, IBM's Via Voice, or some other
> speech recognition/transcription software? What did you think of it?
>
> --How did it work for transcribing interviews with a variety of people?
> (from what I've read, to get the best results, you're supposed to
> "train" the software to work with your voice and speech patterns--is
> this going to be a big problem when I'm recording a number of different
> voices?)
>
> --Did you try having the software transcribe recordings made over the
> phone? How well did that work? (Olympus makes a "Telephone Recording
> Device" to go with their Mac-compatible digital recorders, but it
> doesn't appear to plug directly into the phone line--it records the
> output from the telephone receiver. Has anybody worked with a setup
> like that?)
>
> --Do you have any experience with using speech recognition software
> with recordings made on a lower-end, consumer-quality digital recorder
> (the ones I'm seeing are in the $150-$200 range) vs. a higher-end,
> professional-quality one (probably $400 and up)? Do I really need to
> spend the money to get the recording quality I need for decent speech
> recognition results?
>
> --Any other advice you can share?
>
> And, if I go the lower-tech, type-by-hand route, do you have any advice
> or suggestions about that? In particular, any recommendations on
> cassette vs. digital recorders, in terms of sound quality, ease of use,
> and any other relevant features?

A lot of us don't know what kind of equipment our customers use. I prefer
digital because the quality is much better than tapes. Forget about
saving/recording to wave (.wav) audio format because the files are just so
huge. Olympus (.dss), Sony (.msv) and mp3 audio formats are pretty good
and the file sizes are manageable.

Try to avoid telephone interviews if possible because sometimes line
interference will show up on the recording (but you won't hear it as you
talk on the phone), and usually the volume of the guest isn't very good (at
least that's my experience).

You actually have a lot of planned interview hours. You're going to have
to maintain tight control to keep the interviews a reasonable size and
maintain quality. If I had to make a bet, I would wager that at least some
of these interviews will end up with a transcription service no matter what
method of getting these interviews in print you end up using.

You know, I'm sure, about conducting interviews in a quiet environment and
not interrupting (particularly things like "uh-huh"), but also watch out
for wind coming from holding outdoor interviews, fans, air-conditioners,
etc. You won't hear it, but the sound will appear on the recording and
muffle what is said.

Good luck with your dissertation project!

Barb

> Thanks much!
>
> --
> MaryMc
> marymc11@SPAM.BEGONE.mindspring.com
> )
> (
> "Espresso est, ergo cogito." C[_]

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