This semester, I have been helping out Jane with her wonderful Field Methods class in technical matters such as recording, uploading files onto the server and allowing students to securely and quickly download both .wav and .mp3 files. I took this course myself some years ago, and it was a great experience for me and the whole class, and many members of that class have continued on in their studies to do field research of their own, and I’m sure the Field Methods class was as much a help to their research as it was to mine.
But this post is not about when I took the class. Instead, it’s about how I almost buggered up this semester’s class in what can best be described as a lesson in keeping backups of your recordings.
(Warning: Some computer nerd stuff follows after the fold.)
Fieldwork
FollowHow long is a piece of string?
Last month I received the following email query from a colleague:
“I am currently submitting a grant application for a small grant at the HRELP to document …. One concern I have is how many hours it will realistically take to transcribe one hour of text. I have done fieldwork in the past, but this would be the first time that I will have trained a transcriber who would work (mostly) independently. (The linguists on the project would consult with them.) I would like to give some sort of concrete number of total hours transcribed and translated (in contrast to fully annotated).”
Since this is an issue I have been asked about several times, I present here an elaborated version of what I wrote back to my correspondent (here I am using ‘source language’ to refer to the language of the recording, and ‘target language’ to refer to the language of a translation of the recording. I restrict my remarks to transcription of spoken languages).
I wrote back:
The answer to your questions is kind of like the answer to the question: ‘How long is a piece of string?’
There are so many variables:
How can we get the material we have used in our research back to the people we recorded?
Every time I revisited my fieldsite I was asked for copies of photos or recordings and I wanted some way that these could be accessed without me having to be present. When I started visiting Erakor village in central Vanuatu there was intermittent electricity available, usually only in the evenings in the house I lived in.
InField 2010 – from Margaret Florey
[from Margaret Florey, Research Network for Linguistic Diversity]
Linguists, Students of Linguistics, Community Language Activists!
InField 2010: INSTITUTE ON FIELD LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION is now open for registration. It will be held at the University of Oregon (Eugene, Oregon USA)
The Institute on Field Linguistics and Language Documentation is designed for field linguists, graduate students, and language activists to receive training in current techniques and issues in language documentation, language maintenance, and language revitalization.
Workshops: June 21st – July 2nd
Laboratory week: July 5th – July 9th
Field Training: July 5th – July 30th
You can download a poster [.pdf] here
Bypassing written documentation – oral annotation of recorded text
A large corpus of recorded oral tradition can be created using two recording machines, one playing back the spoken texts and the other used to capture an oral annotation. Recording speakers who are commenting on earlier recordings is a method for providing annotations that bypasses literacy.
Recording Aboriginal conversation with video
In 2006 Tom Honeyman began an e-thread on the benefits of and complications relating to using digital video to record natural conversation in a fieldwork setting (see also here, here and here and here). For several years I have been trying to record conversation without actually being present to monitor the recordings. It can be quite tricky because there are so many variables. Mostly I haven’t been completely satisfied with the results. I began by using straight audio, partly because it is easier to bring it off successfully but then the visual information was sadly lacking. My first attempts with video were not very successful, partly because of inadequate equipment. I had a large imposing camera with a huge tripod. The resultant recordings were far from naturalistic. Three years ago I said that I hoped for success adapting techniques reported here, for audio, to video. It has taken a while to provide an update because even with a smaller camera, I felt I hadn’t got the mike placement right, or the images were overexposed, or they weren’t clear enough to see people’s faces easily. In fact I’ve been getting sick of trying to transcribe this sort of material. On my latest fieldtrip I was determined to do a really good recording. This meant getting outdoors in the bush, away from the sounds of ceiling fans, vehicles, aeroplanes and whippersnippers.
Teaching linguistic fieldwork and sustainability
The Department of Linguistics at SOAS and the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies are jointly organising a workshop on teaching linguistic fieldwork and sustainability on Friday 4th December 2009. The workshop is intended for both experienced and novice lecturers and students of Field Linguistics, and will introduce them to knowledge and skills from a wide range of areas in linguistic theory and practice, with a focus on learning about “real world” language problems and solutions.
The workshop is aimed at students interested in learning more about fieldwork, and staff who are considering how fieldwork might fit into the linguistics curriculum. There will be two strands – one for beginners who are interested but have no experience of fieldwork, and one for advanced who have some fieldwork experience or have participated in a field methods course. For beginners, we will cover a range of fieldwork types, including language documentation and urban sociolinguistic fieldwork. For the advanced group topics will include language and culture documentation, sustainable documentation methods and phonetic fieldwork.
Presentations will be given by staff and post-graduate students from SOAS, Queen Mary University, Manchester University and Edinburgh University.
Wagiman electronic dictionary
Aidan Wilson went up to Pine Creek and Kybrook Farm in the Northern Territory last week to deliver the various versions of the Wagiman electronic dictionary to the Wagiman community. You can read about it at the Project for Free Electronic Dictionaries blog.
Kioloa Papuanists’ Workshop
kp͡w (KIOLOA PAPUANISTS’ WORKSHOP)
Now calling for papers and for registration of participants.
Following the successful recent Papuanists’ Workshops in Sydney, the ANU Papuanists will be hosting a weekend of Papuanist talks at the Kioloa coast campus (c. 3 hours from Canberra and 3.5 hours from Sydney) from 2 pm Friday 30th October to early afternoon Sunday 1st November, with a bushwalk up Pigeon House planned for the Saturday afternoon.
Anyone who has an interest in Papuan languages and linguistics is invited to come and present a paper or just listen to other people’s papers and join in the discussion.
Do-it-themselves recording
Here’s an article [Thanks Nick!] on Steven Bird’s interesting attempt to increase data on an endangered language (Usarufa, Highlands New Guinea) by giving speakers voice recorders, and training them in documenting their language.