The Debate Over Transcription: Arguments Against Transcription
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While oral historians in the United States embrace transcribed interviews, historians in Canada emphasize utilizing the audio master file. The website for the Canadian Oral History Association states that “The primary form of the oral history document is the recorded human voice. This document, in turn, may be applied as informational source material or directly in sound or transcribed form.”1 This debate not only concerns the management of oral history but also questions the philosophical basis of the written word versus the spoken word. There is considerable evidence that a written transcription of an interview does not contain the full picture and complexity that a recording can. Michael Frisch notes this major stumbling block for transcription:
Everyone knows that there are worlds of meaning that lie beyond words; nobody pretends for a moment that the transcript is in any real sense a better representation of reality than the voice itself.2
Verbal nuances, pauses, tone and inflection are just a few of the aspects missing from a written transcript that are included in an audio file.
Many if not all interviews are edited when they are transcribed, which does not present a full and complete view of the interview for the reader or researcher. Small verbal mistakes like using the words “um” and “uh” are often helpful for linguists and anthropologists who study the complexities of language. Tone of voice is also important, and “what is lost in the act of transcription is precisely what is so difficult to recover in the act of reading, namely, how the expression is to be taken." If used for research, meaning is very important to determine the point of view of the narrator. If that point of view cannot be determined easily from a transcript, there is a major issue for the researcher.
A written document can be seen as an official and binding record rather than merely a transcription of a life history or personal memory. In some cultures, particularly in areas with a low literacy rate, “the creation of a printed document can convey an authority upon a narrative that it does not possess in spoken form.”.4 Therefore, it is important for oral historians to be sensitive to this issue and perhaps give more attention to the recorded document. Meaning can change while reading, and inflection is not present in a written document. The meaning of the document can be difficult to determine, and it should not be up to the reader to place judgment on an individual’s memories.5 An interviewer, transcriber, or project director can also edit a transcript to change the meaning of a story or memory of an event. A written transcript can be changed completely and entirely. A recording, however, cannot be changed as easily, and any changes that are made will be noticeable to the listener or viewer.
With some interviewees, the sounds and feelings that emerge from an interview can convey more of a story than the actual words that are spoken.6 Recordings like this can be used as extremely effective teaching tools and can truly capture the feeling of an era or period in history. An oral history interview is “a multilayered communicative event, which a transcript only palely reflects.”7 When transcribing an interview, words are not the only parts of the interview that are eliminated during the editing process. Feeling, inflection, and visual cues may also be removed. This limits the deeper meaning found in the interview that listeners may connect with. It also limits the ability of the listener to place the words of the interviewer within the context of how they feel about the subject matter.
Continue this discussion here Diffusion: Digital Media and the Internet's Effect on Oral History
Related Pages
The Debate Over Transcription: Arguments for Transcription
The Debate Over Transcription: Arguments Against Transcription
Diffusion: Digital Media and the Internet's Effect on Oral History
Accessibility: Tools That Allow New Perspective
The Debate Over Transcription: Possible Conclusions
References
1 Canadian Oral History Association, “Welcome to COHA! – Canadian Oral History Association,” COHA, http://www.canoha.ca/. Accessed on 5/28/09
2 Frisch, "Oral History and the Digital Revolution: Toward a Post-Documentary Sensibility," 2.
3 David Olson, The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 260.
4 Maze, “The Uneasy Page,” 245.
5 Maze, “The Uneasy Page,” 246.
6 Willa K. Baum, Transcribing and Editing Oral History (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 1991), 15.
7 Valerie Raleigh Yow, Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2005), 315.
