Transcribing is writing word for word what you hear when you play back a recorded interview. Spoken language is very different from written language. Spoken language is less formal; it is looser with more rambling and run-on sentences. So a transcript of an oral interview is not at all like formal written language.

• Transcribing: listening to a recording of an interview and writing it out exactly as it was spoken
• Transcript: all the pages of the written word-for-word copy of the interview

You and your literacy group may be thinking only of your project which will be done in a few months or a year. But the information you have collected through recorded interviews is valuable original research. With a little more work you can create material that will be of use to future literacy groups and to other researchers as well.

Why Transcribe an Interview?

• You can get information more easily from a written transcript than from a recording. You can quickly skim a written transcript to look for specific information, but you can’t do that with a recording.
• Recordings are sometimes difficult to hear clearly. The quality of the recording may be lost over time and interviewees sometimes speak quietly or with a dialect that not everyone can understand.
• Transcripts can easily be kept in libraries and other public places where people will have access to them in the future.
• Listening and transcribing gives the transcriber a chance to explore the miracle and complexity of language. When you transcribe, you really pay attention to language and how people use it. Transcribers become more aware of the structure of their language: vocabulary, morphology (the different small parts that make up one word), sentence structure and pronunciation. If the interviews are with Elders, younger people will have the chance to hear more traditional and complex Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun.
• Transcribing gives interviewers a chance to critique their interview style and to make changes for future interviews.

Issues to Think About Before Transcribing

• Transcribing is just plain hard work. It is slow, tedious and very detailed. Professionals estimate six to twelve hours of transcriptions for each hour of taped recording.¹
• If your group includes very young people or those with weaker language and literacy skills, you may want to hire a professional transcriber to ensure accurate transcripts. You need to plan and budget for this from the beginning of your project.
• However, the people who do the interviews may be the best ones to do the transcriptions because they know the storyteller and were present for the actual interview. If your group plans to transcribe, do the transcriptions as soon as possible after the interview while everything is still fresh in the interviewers’ minds.
• Even if you hire a professional to do the transcribing, people in the oral history group should transcribe a few passages that are of interest to them. It will give them valuable exposure to language in all its complexities.

1. From Like It Was, A Complete Guide to Writing Oral History by Cynthia Stokes Brown, published by Teachers and Writers Collaborative, New York, 1988