Technology How To

Overview

• Using Audacity to listen
• Using the Word document template
• Setting up your workspace for transcription
• Transcription tips

Using Audacity to listen to the interview

• Audacity is an audio editing program that is available on your Thinkpad under start >> Digital Media Tools >> Audio Editors. It is also available at http://www.audacity.com
• Obtain a copy of your oral history and open it in Audacity (Or right click>>Save as this training file)
• You will notice that Audacity has common stop, play, and pause buttons in the upper left hand corner of the screen. You can use these during playback to pause the audio while you catch-up on transcription.
• In order to transcribe at a reasonable speed, you probably want to slow down the playback. To do this:
  1. Click on Edit >> Select >> All
  2. Click on Effect >> Change Speed
  3. The Extent to which you slow it down depends on how fast your interviewee talked. Start out with a 15% decrease in speed and hit preview.
  4. If this works, click ok, the entire file will be slowed down. This will take several minutes
  5. If you are only transcribing a portion of the interview you can just slow down that portion.
  6. Be sure to save this as a new file (if you save it) so you do not overwrite your original recording.
• Once you have the audio at a speed which works, open the document template, familiarize yourself with the text-insertion shortcuts, and lay out your work-space for transcription

Using the Word document template

• Download the Word transcription template that has been setup for use with WFU oral histories
• Open the word document and enable Macros by clicking on the options button next to the security warning in the upper left-hand corner of the word document
• In the window that pops-up, select “Enable content” and click ok. This will enable macros for this session only
• This word document contains two macros
  1. CTRL-R – This macro inserts a properly formatted entry for the Interviewer
  2. CTRL-E – This macro inserts a properly formatted entry for the Interviewee
• You can use these two macros to help distinguish comments as you transcribe. You should hit “Enter” to move to a new line before using either of these two macros
• Once you have completed transcribing your interview, you can use Find/Replace in word to replace all of the occurrences of the phrase “Interviewee:” with the interviewee’s name

Setting up your workspace for transcription

• To setup your computer’s workspace for transcribing, it is best to manually re-size your windows so you can see both at the same time.
• You only need to be able to see the play/pause buttons in audacity once you are ready to transcribe.
• To re-size the window, use the window controls in the upper right hand corner to “Restore down” the window
• Grab the lower right hand corner of the application window and re-size it so that it fills only a portion of the screen. Grab the title bar to position the window over to the side
• Repeat thsi process with Microsoft Word so that you can see both applications at the same time.
• Setting up your workspace for transcription

Transcription tips

• If you are transcribing with multiple people, break the interview into multiple segments and transcribe independently. At the end, merge all three transcripts into a single document
• While transcipriotns should be verbatim, it can be difficult to capture every word, pause, and punctuation. Don’t get overwhelmed trying to replicate the cadence and structure of content, getting accurate word and sentence structure is adequate.
• Make use of the pause button during transcription to keep up. Be sure to save your word document frequently!