Poddie Collaboration to produce a Lesson Transcript

bababardwan
February 25, 2011, 11:10 PM posted in General Discussion

I enjoy working on transcribing the lessons and I think it's a very worthwhile exercise. Trouble is it's very time consuming and so usually it presents itself as too big a task,onerous, daunting. I think this is likely the case for many Poddies who may also enjoy giving transcribing a go but know they won't have time to transcribe a whole lesson. I also know once or twice we have mentioned working together on a transcript but this has never been organised. I've had the idea of setting up a post in the transcripts with tal group [ you can join the group here:

http://chinesepod.com/community/groups/view/transcripts-with-tal-173

] where I have created small 30 second time slots where anyone and everyone can post as little or as much of the transcribing of that 30second slot as they feel like in a 30second subthread. That way we can all join in and chip away at it. I'd encourage everyone from Newbie to Advanced to get involved. Even if a Newbie could identify a word, for example "da jia" [everyone] and put an exact time next to it then I think that would be good. It doesn't have to be correct [others can help correct ] and it doesn't have to be done sequentially...you can jump into any time slot you like with whatever you can come up with. It also doesn't matter how many jump in and work on the same time slot...doubling up is fine...you'll just confirm what others are hearing or show areas that may need focus on for clarification. The important thing is participation...the more the merrier. Come on poddies, join in and give it a shot. 加油吧!

The first Collaboration is on the Advanced Lesson 中国通 which is here:

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/11369


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zhenlijiang
February 26, 2011, 05:20 AM

Wow Baba that's impressive. Good idea, and you've gone and done all that organizing so that it could actually work. I would chip in if I had access to the lessons now, but hopefully you'll have so many takers there'll be no room for me anyway. You've opened this up for many people of all levels to take part in and presented the opportunities in such a flexible way. It's great! 加油加油

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bababardwan

thanks zhen. There's always room, but I appreciate the sentiment behind your kind wishes. :)

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chris

Agreed, Barbs, great idea. Might finally have a go at one of the 30sec slots having shied away from a whole lesson in the past! I'm also beginning to understand better how you achieved that astounding post-count this month! ;-)

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bababardwan

thanks mate. I wouldn't call it an achievement...it tends to draw some negative attention from time to time, hehe...so I'm just glad the community board only shows the latest post from a thread. The thing is, myself and other transcribers have in the past talked about doing a joint effort on some transcripts, but that was never organised or got off the ground. I suddenly had this idea that if I just set them out into 30 seconds [ I thought even a full minute might be a bit daunting for someone new to it, but who couldn't give 30 seconds a shot? ...or even put in a few words from that 30 second slot?....I thought this way it would be more inviting and hoped it would encourage more to get involved. I also would like to keep up some transcribing, but having done one at each level am running out of motivation to do whole transcripts] slots...had the post up and ready to go, then it would be easier and more inviting for poddies to jump in and give it a shot. I'm very happy for anyone to follow my format [or a different format if so desired] and set up other poddie transcript collaboration threads for other lessons.

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bodawei
February 27, 2011, 06:11 AM

That is a good idea Baba, I have at times thought about joining in and never did! I even resolved to do one and never did!  I am clearly not your best ever collaborator, haha. 

Ok, can you share a little on your technique?  I have the most basic questions. If I was to listen to this lesson (haven't got around to it yet), while listening in i-Tunes do I start writing my transcript in Word?  I say Word, because if I do it directly in ChinesePod inevitably the site times out or fails to accept my input, or just completely disappears (I still have this problem from time to time, just stopped complaining.) In other words, where do I write my transcript?  My problem is that I probably want to do it sentence by sentence, and if I am in Word do I flip back into i-Tunes to stop it and re-wind to the next sentence?  Sounds cumbersome; is there a better way? (There always is, I find.)  

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cinnamonfern

I did my transcript in Word and then copied it into CPod. I shrank both windows (Word and i-Tunes) so they each fit on the screen and then I could go back and forth without minimizing them. I would listen to a bit of the dialogue - generally a sentence, pause it and then type it in Word. (Don't try typing in Word without pausing first. You won't be able to keep up and then you'll have to go back and rewind constantly, which is a pain.) After typing, I'd then go back to i-Tunes and do this again - listen to a sentence, pause, type it into Word. At the end I went back to the beginning and double checked to make sure I got everything right. It went pretty quickly.

This is my first time transcribing anything, so other people might have better tricks. Hope this helps!

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watyamacallit

I find trying to type in Word to be a tedious process. Perhaps it is just that I don't know what I am doing. Could I suggest that it might be easier to type here:

http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/ime.html

before copying it across to Word.

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zhenlijiang

I've always been a very slow transcriber so you may not want my tips, but what I use to listen to the audio is the pop-up player, provided on the lesson page. I just make that pop-up window as small as possible, shove it in the corner of my screen out of the way, as I type on Word.

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cinnamonfern

I downloaded Sogou and use that (and sometimes the Windows pinyin IME) to type characters. It's no different than using the web IME you provided. Using this, it's very easy to type in Chinese in Word and to switch quickly between this and English (I've got it set to change by pressing the "Shift" key - which is kind of annoying and I might change it). This is much faster than first typing the English in Word, then just the Chinese in the web IME, and then copying it into Word.

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bababardwan

"In other words, where do I write my transcript?"

..I'm a little wary of doing it in word, though I note cinnamonfern is doing it without problems. It has caused formatting problems and even some crazy posts in the past. Maybe that has been resolved. Personally I do it in Google documents as shown to me by our founder tal, and it has worked fine for me. I gather though this is no longer an option in China? I think tal knew of some other good sites. I think there are many other programs you could do it in. Even email it to yourself.

As for technique, I do pretty much what cinnamonfern describes. I open the lesson in windows media player, and then also open google docs [read...wherever it is you're doing your transcribing], then right click on my taskbar and click on show windows stacked, and then drag the windows media player window down as short as possible [this way it has the full width of my screen so rewinding is more accurate, but it's taking a minimum of vertical real estate ]. I then listen to a sentence, pause wmp, type out the sentence, rewind back a little for continuity and then keep going. This works for me, but I'm sure there are other ways that work better for others. Good luck and if I can help, please let me know :)

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zhenlijiang

I don't know if it was something I was doing but I had always found GoogleDocs to be really frustrating to work in. SoHo Writer may have been a little easier, I didn't really get the chance to try it out.

I have no formatting problems with Word, as long as I convert the finished document into an RTF file then copy and paste from that. I think you could also probably convert into an even simpler text format and copy and paste from that.

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bababardwan

thanks for the tips zhen. I'll keep that in mind.

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bodawei

Thank you cinnamonfern, whatyamacallit, zhen and baba - I'm glad I asked this question. Sorry I 'stepped out' and missed all the discussion here - just first day back in China with lots to do, and also trying to equip my iPod touch (which reminds me I still don't have a Chinese dictionary on it - any recommendations?) After managing to buy a new power cord for an old computer, and order a particular presently unavailable brand of yoghurt at the local supermarket (! - I plain forgot that people do such things here, and was taken aback when the 服务员 said 预订吗?why of course), I'm feeling that I should continue my education and develop transcription skills. :)

No - I don't think I can use google docs any more, haven't checked in a while.

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cinnamonfern
February 27, 2011, 08:58 AM

Just started the Intermediate lesson! That was fun - and not too difficult! I had to stop myself or I might have just transcribed the whole thing. I'm such a nerd. Maybe I'll give a try at the Advanced lesson - though that's probably way beyond me.

Oh baba - one suggestion: For future posts - maybe you can you put the link to each lesson in the initial transcript posts. That'll make it easier for people to track them down.

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zhenlijiang

Go for it! Nerds are cool!

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bababardwan

cinnamonfern,

oh of course...yeah I should have put a link to the lesson in the initial transcript post. That has been done before but I forgot. I should be able to edit that and put it in. Sounds like your typing the transcript elsewhere so you have a copy of all your good work which is a wise idea.

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bababardwan

oh, I forgot to add, don't stop yourself [unless you want to]. The whole point is to do as much or as little as you feel like. Doesn't matter if there is some doubling up. Also there are so many other lessons at every level we can tackle...anything goes I say. Just great if we have involvement to any extent from as many as possible. And yeah, it's gotta be fun. Cheers :)