Must Read -- "Going Remote" (Part II)

9/2/2015

A second blog entry about West Virginia University’s cutting-edge remote transcribing program has gone live at TypeWell’s Byword blog. Go check it out, and while you’re there, catch up with part I, too!

Click to Read!

3 Comments

Susan Truxell Sauter

9/5/2015 12:03:45 pm

Kap: Why do you call what you do "chunking"? I still can't quite conceptualize all the input steps & output steps to accomplish a transcription. Interesting subject. Read 1 & 2.

Kap link

9/5/2015 12:58:49 pm

Excellent question! A TypeWell Transcriber does not, generally, type a verbatim (word-for-word) transcript. Instead, we type a meaning-for-meaning transcript. That means, if I were to say, "Hello, everyone, I . . . uh . . . I was wanting to say before we get started today that . . . uh, it's nice to, nice to see everyone here this afternoon. Very nice."

The transcriber would type, in that case, "Hello, everyone, it's nice to see everyone here this afternoon."

This process is called "chunking." It is a process of listening, lagging, processing, rearticulating, and typing, but it all happens very quickly (equivalent to about 220 spoken words per minute). As you are typing the last sentence, you are simultaneously listening to the next sentence and holding that information in your mind, preparing to chunk it. In fact, the three skills they test you on initially to see if you are a good candidate for transcriber training are typing speed, language use/grammar, and short-term memory.

Susan Truxell Sauter

9/7/2015 09:11:52 am

Thanks. That's interesting. I recall now your previously using the phrase meaning-for-meaning to describe your work. "Chunking" is a good replacement word. Do you know if that word is used elsewhere, i.e., outside the "transcription" community as a technical term? Is it used in the same way?

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