Tips for Transcribing Interviews
- Be sure to record: date of the interview, names of interviewees and interviewer, birth date of interviewee.
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Always indicate who is speaking. An example of an easy way to do this is
Interviewer: Tell me about the roadhouse.
John Smith: It was different than the ballrooms, there was a jukebox, and they served alcohol, and...
- Transcribe exactly what was said, do not edit, add or eliminate anything.
- Do not try to approximate dialects with spelling (using “gonna” instead of “going to”), dialects are hard to make clear, so it’s best to use regular English.
- Use brackets to include gestures or actions important to the interview. For instance “Yeah we used to do that [laughs], and the girls looked nice all dressed up [whistles].” You can also add necessary information which was not spoken with brackets, for instance “Well Bob [Johnson] was always in there.”
- Be sure to proofread and spell check your transcript. You will not upload the file you have created to the website, but rather copy and paste the text of the transcript into a window on our upload page. Be sure to look through the text after pasting to make sure it is still formatted correctly, then add any necessary changes.