Guidelines for Hub4/TDT Transcription 2000

At the Unix prompt, enter

bc-type tdt train

Double click/ highlight the file desired, and paste in at the prompt

The xwave window will not appear until the first attempt is made to listen to a segment. Use the "Again" key to start. The transcription shortcuts show the keyboard commands for listening, scrolling and changing tags and timestamps in the editor.

Conventions

word-for-word transcription, using standard orthography and standard capitalization

Remove all text that is not present in the audio - copyright information, speaker identification
use end-of-sentence punctuation (periods, question marks), commas, and hyphens for hyphenated words but no other punctuation (please remove all other extraneous marks, ie quotation marks, double hypens, etc.)

every speaker turn has to be indicated & timestamped, e.g.

<t 129.54>

Broadcast Labels


sr	start of <section type=report> all files will start with this
t	start of (non-initial) turn within section
b	turn interval breakpoints
e	end of turn within section, followed by a non-speech region
o	start of overlap region (speaker one is interrupted by speaker two)
e1	end of overlap where speaker one stops and speaker two continues
e2	end of overlap where speaker two stops and speaker one continues

for interruptions, use <o> & timestamp to indicate beginning of overlapping speech region - overlapping speech is determined by overlapping word boundaries, rather than the exact point in the waveform which may sever a word in two-

<t 1122.443>

about the same thing I

<o 1123.276>

SPEAKER1:understand {laugh}

SPEAKER2:well,

<e1 1124.256>

oceanography is new exploration and we're not

<e1 indicates that the first speaker has now stopped, and the second speaker has continued to speak. If BOTH speakers STOP at the same point in time, the next speaker turn indicated by a if overlap ends with non-speech section (silence, music, etc.), mark beginning of non-speech section with <e> & timestamp

The [[NS]] tag can be used when there is an area within a turn that has no speech within it , i.e. a musical interruption, or extended background noise.

<b 123.456 >
The crowd was furious.
<b 124.567>
[[NS]]
<b128.987>
Calm was soon restored by the arrival of the riot police.

indicate disflencies by using hyphen to mark partial words; transcribe pause fillers, e.g.

We're jus- just waiting for that uh tha- that report to to come in.

transcribe standard English contractions as they're spoken: they're, won't, isn't, don't, etc.

for non-standard contractions like "gonna" and "wanna" spell out the entire word: going to, want to.

identify extended non-speech sections (music, dead air, sound effects) with <e> and timestamp at beginning of section, followed by <t> and timestamp when speech resumes, e.g.

    <t 148.57> Sounds of gunfire filled the air.
    <e 154.50>
    <t 170.89> That sound greeted early morning visitors.

NOTE Several speakers

In situations when you have several people speaking at once, and it is very difficult to make them out, insert an <e tag at the start of the confused section. Then start the new turn at the next available clear section.

<t 223.456> <<male>>

<b 225.678>

<e 230.302>
<t 232.563> <<female>>

use (( )) to indicate words or passsages that are hard to understand or difficult to transcribe accurately

spell out all numerical sequences

twenty-five, sixty-six, one oh seven

spell out all titles like "doctor" (instead of Dr.) and "junior" (instead of Jr.), EXCEPT for Mr., Ms. and Mrs.

indicate proper names with a ^ (this is being done so that we can standardize the spelling of proper names after transcription; tags will be stripped out before delivery)

acronyms and spoken strings of letters will be indicated with ~, e.g.

~FBI
Washington ~DC

we will use the following set of non-lexemes:

    ah
    eee
    eh
    ew
    ha
    hee
    huh
    hm
    oh
    oo
    um
    uh

other "special" words like interjections and acronyms which were specially tagged in some versions of hub4 transcriptions will be transcribed as normal words, i.e. not specially marked. for instance:

yeah, uh-huh, okay, gee, hey, AIDS, NAFTA