Linguistic Processing - Transcription, Annotation And Translation

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Linguistic Processing - Transcription, Annotation And Translation

Contributor(s): THL Staff

One is now ready to actually work on the language of the title. If the original recording is easy to understand and in the language that the target audience speaks, then one can possibly skip this step. However, if one at all cares about multiple audiences speaking different languages, then this is a crucial and complex step. The content remains inaccessible to anyone who doesn't understand the original language of the content.

The first step is time-coded transcription. The speech of the title should be transcribed in the original language's script, and time coded such that each clause or sentence is marked in terms of beginning and end times. Serious transcription is a difficult and time consuming process. The resultant transcript then can be translated into the relevant target language. Finally, one can also add rich annotations to the transcript to provide relevant details on lexical, grammatical, social and other issues pertaining to the title and its language. Intellectual processing in the form of annotations is necessary to contextualize and interpret the titles:

THL is currently using InqScribe as a transcription solution. See below for InqScribe transcription instructions.

For some uses, a subtitled version may be preferable to synchronized transcript. A synchronized transcript is useful in that the entire transcript can be searched, one can consult the transcript and selectively decide what parts should be viewed, and one can see the overall context of a given line by looking above and below the transcript. However, subtitles can be delivered easily on DVDs and other self-contained media easily used in computers or DVD players, while the simplicity of DVDs can be attractive for focusing entirely on the media. Whether or not the title has speech in it, subtitles and other forms of guides can also be made to help navigate and understand the title. This includes slide shows of images to accompany audio sound tracks.

Provided for unrestricted use by the external link: Tibetan and Himalayan Library