Training Modules: Entering a New Transcript Part 2

Transcription

1 Training Modules: Entering a New Transcript Part 2 Today we are going to walk through entering a new transcript with SALT software. This is part 2 in a series of 3 videos. Notice that the new transcript begins with the information that we have already entered and we re ready to begin transcription. Before we go any further, let s talk about the help system built into SALT. Page 1 of 18

2 Select Help from the Main menu. There are different ways to get help, including general help topics, context-specific help, viewing the User Guide, and going to the training materials on the SALT web site. We re going to select Context Help which provides help associated with the current window. Page 2 of 18

3 Since we re in the SALT editor, we re presented with a list of transcript entry conventions. We can click on any of these conventions for details and examples. Since this is our first transcript, let s look at General Rules for Entering Transcripts. There s a lot of good information here. Number 2 states that each utterance must start on a separate line beginning with a speaker id. Number 5 talks about using upper and lower case characters. Number 6 discusses what to do if you can t understand what the speaker is saying. Ok, we ll close the help window for now and go back to the SALT editor. Page 3 of 18

4 In order to transcribe our sample, we need some way to control the playback of the recording. Connor s sample was recorded using a digital audio recorder. The audio file was copied from the recorder to the computer s desktop and renamed Connor PGHW. We re going to use a free software program called Express Scribe by NCH Software to control the playback of this audio. Express Scribe is just one of a variety of software programs available on the Internet. There are also foot pedal controls for hand-free playback. First, we ll start up Express Scribe and open our audio file. Click the Load command and browse for the audio file. Page 4 of 18

5 Here it is in the SALT transcripts folder called Connor PGHW Once you have selected the file, click on "LOAD" to load the audio. We re not going to spend a lot of time talking about using Express Scribe since this is only one of many playback options. Page 5 of 18

6 Express Scribe is controlled by system-wide function keys. System-wide function keys are function keys which can be pressed from any program, eliminating the need to go back and forth between Express Scribe and the SALT editor. A list of the function keys can be found within the Control menu. A few of the keys we ll be using are F9 for Play, F4 for Stop, and F7 for Rewind. You can refer to the Express Scribe Help menu for more information on controlling the playback. Page 6 of 18

7 Ok, we have our audio file ready to play. The first step is to move to the starting point in the audio. For narrative samples, this is the target speaker s first utterance of the retell. Press F9 to start playing the audio. E: And we are here today with Connor. E: Ok, what do you think? C: It was a good story. E: I like that story too. E: So I just want you to tell the story using your own words. C: Pookins one day, was Ok we went a little too far. Let s rewind the audio a little and this time we ll stop when Connor says Pookins. Good. We re at the starting point of the narrative. Page 7 of 18

8 Notice the starting time in the playback window. It s at about 15 seconds. Let s change our starting time from 0 seconds to 15 seconds (we just round to the nearest second). Page 8 of 18

9 Let's Insert a blank line after the header information. This isn t required. It just makes a nice separation between the header information and the utterances. We will start each utterance with the letter C. Now let s listen to Connor s first utterance: Pookins one day was uh was sucking a sucker. We re going to assume that you are not familiar with the SALT transcription conventions, but we are not going to take a lot of time here to explain them in detail. Rather we are going to concentrate on the mechanics of typing the sample, and we are going to purposely make errors so we can go back later and correct them. Page 9 of 18

10 So I'm going to type in what he says: C Pookins, one day, (was uh) was suck/ing a sucker. Notice that there s a maze in the middle of the utterance. It s transcribed inside parentheses and consists of the repeated word was and the filled pause, uh. Also notice the /ing (slash-i-n-g) verb ending and the period at the end of the utterance. Listen to the next utterance: And uh and she was and she always wanted to get her own way The first part of this utterance is a maze which finally resolves itself into she always wanted to get her own way Begin this utterance with a C and type: C (And uh and she was) and she always want/ed to get her own way Notice the parenthesized maze, the past tense verb ending /ed. Page 10 of 18

11 Now let s listen to the rest of the utterance and finish typing it: which with that she was really sassy Listen to the next utterance: Mhm. This is an examiner s utterance so begin it with the letter E. E Mhm Note that we deliberately left off the period at the end of the utterance to create an error. Page 11 of 18

12 Listen to the next utterance: She she made faces. Again, begin the utterance with the letter C and type: C (She she made face/s. Notice the missing right parenthesis at the end of the repeated word she to create another error. Also notice the plural bound morpheme. Listen to the next utterance: She sticked her tongue out. We transcribe this as: C She sticked[eo:stuck] her tongue out. Notice the over-generalization error, sticked instead of stuck. The convention we follow for over-generalization errors is first, we don t mark the bound morpheme to avoid giving the speaker credit for its use, and second, we mark the error by typing a code in square brackets at the end of the word. The EO in the code stands for Error Overgeneralization and we include the correct word at the end of the code. Page 12 of 18

13 Listen to one more utterance: She made fu goofy faces sticked her tongue out. We transcribe this as: C She made (fu*) goofy face//s, sticked[eo: stuck] her tonge out. There are several things to pay attention to in this utterance. First, it sounded like Connor started to say funny but changed it to goofy. To mark this part-word revision, we enclose it in parentheses and type an asterisk at the end of the part-word. The second thing to notice is that the word faces has two slashes. This was done deliberately to create a transcription error. The third thing to notice is that Connor again said sticked instead of stuck. We code it the same way as before. This time, however, we created another transcription error by typing a blank space inside the code. There are very few rules for what can and can t be typed inside the square brackets but one rule is that there cannot be any blank spaces. And the last thing to notice is that we misspelled the word tongue. Page 13 of 18

14 That s enough typing for this exercise. We ll just assume we typed the rest and move to the end of the sample. Let s listen to the end of the sample. She only kept one apple for herself, just in case. Notice the final time of the sample 5 minutes and 42 seconds. Page 14 of 18

15 We ll enter this as the final time in the transcript: Before we do anything else, let s save our transcript. Page 15 of 18

16 We select File Save and are presented with the Save As dialogue box. We can save our transcripts in any folder we want. We can even save it on a thumb drive or on a network drive. By default, we re prompted to save our transcript in the SALT, Transcripts folder within our My Documents folder. Page 16 of 18

17 Click in the File name: box and type the name of the transcript file that you would like to use. We ll name this file Connor PGHW. The SALT transcript extension.slt will be automatically added to the end of the filename. Page 17 of 18

18 Page 18 of 18 Click the Save button and our transcript is saved.