{"id":3883,"date":"2010-04-14T17:44:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T17:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2010\/04\/how-long-is-a-piece-of-string\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:49:18","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:49:18","slug":"how-long-is-a-piece-of-string","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2010\/04\/how-long-is-a-piece-of-string\/","title":{"rendered":"How long is a piece of string?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month I received the following email query from a colleague:<\/p>\n

\n

“I am currently submitting a grant application for a small grant at the HRELP<\/a> to document …. One concern I have is how many hours it will realistically take to transcribe one hour of text. I have done fieldwork in the past, but this would be the first time that I will have trained a transcriber who would work (mostly) independently. (The linguists on the project would consult with them.) I would like to give some sort of concrete number of total hours transcribed and translated (in contrast to fully annotated).”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since this is an issue I have been asked about several times, I present here an elaborated version of what I wrote back to my correspondent (here I am using ‘source language’ to refer to the language of the recording, and ‘target language’ to refer to the language of a translation of the recording. I restrict my remarks to transcription of spoken languages).
\nI wrote back:
\nThe answer to your questions is kind of like the answer to the question: ‘How long is a piece of string?’
\nThere are so many variables:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. how many languages\/varieties are represented in the recording (is it monolingual or multilingual) and what languages these are\n
  2. the transcriber’s familiarity with and fluency in the source language(s) (including, if they are a native speaker, whether they speak the same dialect as the interviewees)\n
  3. whether the transcriber can work alone or needs to work together with someone else (the interviewee or another speaker) to listen to the recording and have it repeated back (possibly at a slower rate) for transcription. Some transcribers do a ‘first pass’ rough transcription that is then checked with another person to arrive at a more refined transcription. The transcription time should be calculated as the sum of the times for these two processes\n
  4. the phonology of the source language – some languages have more segmental distinctions than others, and, depending on who is doing the transcribing, some distinctions may be more difficult to hear and transcribe than others. If a language has suprasegmental contrasts to be included in the transcription (eg. tonal contrasts) the nature of these will also affect the amount of transcription time. Tony Woodbury<\/a> reports that:
    \n

    “The Eastern Chatino of Quiahije has 20 phonemically different tones, with complex sandhi phenomena that affect morpholexical tones. Transcription alone by trained fluent native speakers takes 1 hour for 5-10 minutes of clear monologic speech. I’m slower than that, and I typically transcribe in tandem the post-sandhi phonemic version and a lexical version, mainly as a check on myself (that commits me to sandhi testing except if the context is just right). So for transcription alone, I’d be more like 1 hour for 2-3 minutes. In reality though, I also gloss and determine inflectional categories as I go, because that also helps me narrow down the tone possibilities.<\/p>\n

    I’m a bit slower with the Eastern Chatino of Zacatepec; it is hard because two of the most “populous” tone categories sound exactly alike in isolation and can only be distinguished with sandhi tests.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Transcription of other aspects such as melody of songs or chants, or gesture, will require special training and be correspondingly more time consuming.<\/p>\n

  5. the transcriber’s familiarity with and fluency in the orthography for the transcription\n
  6. the transcriber’s familiarity with a number of aspects of the recording, including:\n