Complicating transcription (3)

[For previous discussions on complicating transcription, see my posts here and here]

A recent tweet about transcription by Professor Trisha Greenhalgh of the University of Oxford has caused considerable interest and reaction. As might be expected with my professional transcriber hat on, I have some thoughts!

Firstly, and possibly surprisingly, my first reaction wasn’t ‘this is the end of the world for my business’. Even since writing my first two posts about transcription, just over a year ago, technology has come on in leaps and bounds and I have to face the fact that there are some really good AI programmes out there which are making automated transcription much more accurate than it used to be. These will undoubtedly be gamechangers for cash-strapped students and researchers. Even for people who want, and are able, to pay someone like me to transcribe their sound files, there are surely ways to make the process more efficient. There will always be bits of redundant speech in any interview, and parts that are more or less relevant, and they can’t always be identified in advance, but if there is time for the interviewer to listen to at least the beginning and end of the recording before sending it to the transcriber, then a note to say ‘start from 2 mins 50 secs in’ and ‘don’t bother with the last 5 minutes’ is no bother, it saves me a bit of time, and you a bit of money, and the chitchat at the beginning and end which is never going to be used can be left out with no harm done to anyone.

Secondly, I was very struck by the phrase ‘mindlessly transcribing’. Anyone who’s spent any time at all in undertaking qualitative research can probably relate to it – even as a professional transcriber, there are times when it can be pretty mind-numbing work, and it will be even more so if you are a slow typist and don’t have decent equipment. But I’m not sure that’s what Prof. Greenhalgh meant, exactly – it’s not just that it’s, for many people, a boring and time-consuming (and thus resource-intensive) thing to have to do, but that it’s been seen as essential for demonstrating high-quality research and analysis for so long that this is no longer questioned, and it is one of those ‘givens’ that you just have to do and then you’ll have reached the required standard. I think it’s great and important that this assumption is challenged, and there are no doubt a number of other ‘givens’ in research that could probably benefit from the same. Anything that helps researchers reflect on why they’re doing what they’re doing is surely a good thing – when we pride ourselves on rigorous and insightful analysis, ‘because we’ve always done it like this’ shouldn’t be acceptable in our research methods.

The other word in Prof. Greenhalgh’s tweet which leapt out at me was ‘necessarily’. She is right of course – the mere act of transcribing and entering the transcript into NVivo (or whatever other analysis software you are using) of course doesn’t ensure anything at all, other than you’ve spent the time doing it. However, I do worry a little bit about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. My experience in my PhD was that having to retranscribe every interview (because several of them had been initially transcribed inaccurately by someone else) and then going through them to code each transcript in NVivo meant that I was completely immersed back in my data in a way that I couldn’t be when working with my fieldnotes (although the fieldnotes were immensely helpful in conjunction with the transcript as a prompt for reflection and analysis). Of course as a PhD student I had the luxury of time that most employed academic researchers don’t have, but as a formative experience, that transcription work was incredibly useful to me to reflect on my performance as an interviewer, and the information that I was able to elicit (or not), which I’m sure positively influenced the researcher I became. Later on when I was a postdoc, my interviews were transcribed by somebody else (a sensible use of time and resources, much better than getting me to use my more expensive time doing it), but even so the coding work and going back to the written transcripts also made that immersion in the data more smooth. An additional factor in that particular study was that although we were working in a team of researchers, I was the only person conducting the interviews, so the written transcripts, cumbersome as they were, did allow my colleagues to access the data reasonably straightforwardly. I am aware that the sound files could be shared, as an alternative to sharing the written transcription, and time stamps given of relevant sections so that they could listen to the relevant section without having to plough through irrelevant chitchat, but in our experience when we were analysing the data, quite often colleagues picked up on different issues than I had, whereas if they’d just been working from my fieldnotes and suggestions of relevant passages, that richness of collaboration might have been less likely.

I do realise, of course, that a single tweet can’t cover all the nuances and issues involved in a complex issue like this. I welcome the honesty of the proposed sentence in her forthcoming paper, and particularly welcome the disruption of some of the methods section shorthand which is included unquestioningly in seemingly every paper these days (it’s not just transcription that this relates to; use of grounded theory is another obvious one!). I understand from a subsequent tweet that Prof. Greenhalgh is considering writing a paper leading on from the discussion her initial tweet engendered, and I for one can’t wait to read it. I would caution against throwing the baby (and let’s be honest, part of my business) out with the bathwater, but am absolutely all for reflection on why we do what we do, and considering how we can ensure it is still fit for purpose.

Writing in 2020

I’ve harboured a not particularly secret ambition for the past couple of years to get writing more, and have been working behind the scenes to try and move that ambition forward. Towards the end of last year I did a 12 week online course in Creative Non-Fiction Writing with the National Centre for Writing which was a terrific introduction to thinking creatively about writing, after so many years of mainly academic writing. The feedback was a great mix of constructive feedback on areas requiring improvement, praise for good writing, and general encouragement that I’m not fooling myself about my ability and some of what I write is half-decent. I’d recommend the course to anyone looking for an introduction to creative non-fiction writing; I’m sure their other courses (fiction, poetry, crime writing, etc) are equally high-quality.

This year I’ve signed up to the challenge set by my favourite writing podcast, the Bestseller Experiment, who are inviting us all to sign up and commit to writing 200 words per day in their BXP2020 challenge. I’m usually a bit of a skeptic about these sorts of challenges, to be honest, not helped by my previous experiences with #acwrimo, but this one really seems to be working for me. I’m choosing not to tweet my wordcount every day (that was one of the things that really wound me up about #acwrimo), but for the first time since probably writing up my PhD, I am writing consistently (usually 6 days a week), and always more than the 200 words.

This has been a bit of an extra challenge for me, because I don’t actually have a book that I am specifically working on (well I do, a children’s picture book, but that’s already written and out for comment). I have therefore had to be a bit creative in how I approach this, to make sure that I don’t lose focus. What that means for me, this year, is that 2 days per week I am making myself (I say ‘making myself’, but it’s really not a hardship) sit out in my front garden and write about what I see and experience there. This is an interesting challenge because my front garden is pretty much the absolute definition of the term ‘postage stamp’ (I couldn’t use the back garden as it is a tarmac-ed communal back court with washing lines. Even I’d struggle to get a year’s worth of interest out of that). I am absolutely loving it though – even today when I was out there in Storm Ciara – and am really blown away (pun unintended, although I was almost literally blown away today) by how much there is to see and experience and notice. It’s definitely showing me how much I usually miss in the busy-ness of daily life. I’m also getting to know our garden birds, we have a bunch of regulars at our feeders (sparrows, coal tits, blue tits, blackbirds, and a robin mainly, though I’ve also seen great tits and long-tailed tits recently, and I suppose I should also include the pigeons that hoover up all the seeds that get dropped on the ground).

The other writing days, I am working on a series of essays, some of which are loosely related and others of which are pretty much standalones. I really enjoy this sort of writing, which at the moment is mainly taking the form of me free-writing on a random subject. When I am ready to come back to them, there will be further research needed to bulk some of them out, and my thinking at the moment is that some of the standalones might be suitable for submission to creative non-fiction competitions and literary prizes, or to somewhere like medium.com, and the ones that are loosely connected may end up forming a larger volume that I can try and do something with next year. I’m certainly seeing a few emerging themes which I’d like to explore in more depth in a larger work of creative non-fiction.

I’m also toying with the idea of applying for a Creative Writing MA. The main thing putting me off, to be honest, is having to be self-funding, but I’m the kind of person who thrives in an environment of academic and creative challenge (as my qualifications from, er, 5 different universities will attest). I don’t think that any writer has to do any qualification in order to prove themselves, but I do think that I personally would really benefit from that particular learning experience and it would really help to improve my craft. So maybe some of these pieces I’m writing will end up as forming part of an application for that. Or maybe not – watch this space!

As part of my writing this year I’m also making notes on what I’m learning, with the thought of maybe writing and self-publishing some kind of ‘how-to’ guide. That will depend of course on whether what I learn ends up helping me write anything decent that someone might want to learn from, but I’m excited about the prospect of self-publishing – one thing I’ve definitely learnt from the last couple of years of learning is that self-published doesn’t (necessarily) mean CRAP WRITTEN IN CAPSLOCK.

So, that’s where I’m at with my writing, I’m excited to see what I learn and write this year. It’s not too late to join me at the BXP2020 challenge – maybe it will work for you too!

Shelf Indulgence – January 2020

I feel like I had a bit of a reading slump last month – only 5 books finished (well, 6, but one of them I wasn’t that mad on but have chosen not to review/rate it rather than have a poor review in the world that might just be down to me not being in the right mood. If I reread it I’ll review it then). I don’t know if it’s the time of year, dark days, lingering lurgy, or what, but anyway I hope February will be better! I have read more than those 6 books, but the others are ongoing (in two cases they will be ongoing for several months, as they are humungous half-bricks of books). What has been much better than usual though is that in January I have been writing much more than I usually would (I’ll write about this in another post, soon). So, silver linings…

But, these are the books I did manage to finish in January, starting off with an absolute belter:

An excellent way to start the year – Rachel Clarke, a doctor in the UK’s NHS, and formerly a journalist, wrote this memoir, Your Life in My Hands, both about becoming a doctor and also the period a few years ago when junior doctors were in conflict with the imposition of a new contract by the Department of Health. This outlines the campaign, and the reason for it (including the strikes), and above all shows a huge love and respect for her patients, her colleagues, her job and the NHS. I thought it was a searing indictment of the way that successive governments have ground down the NHS. It also made me proud to be part of the NHS workforce. It is fair to say that she is not a fan of Jeremy Hunt (the UK Health Secretary at the time). Presumably because of her background in journalism her writing is terrific. 4.5/5.

Matthew Beaumont’s Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London was an interesting but also frustrating read. It is a literary history charting nightwalking as written by Chaucer, Shakespeare, through to Dickens and Poe, and other less well-known authors too. It took a while to get going, the first three chapters are more about the definitions and history of nightwalking, and some of the chapters (especially the one on William Blake’s Jerusalem) seemed only very tenuously linked to London at all. But then other chapters were excellent, and I very much enjoyed the two chapters on Dickens (one looking at his non-fiction essays about his own nightwalking, and the other looking at his portrayal of nightwalking in his fiction). I also found the social aspects he highlighted very interesting – it hadn’t really occurred to me to think about the impact of moving from oil/candle street lighting to gas lighting, for example, and the move from night watchmen to the Metropolitan Police service was also interesting. The foreword and epilogue are provided by Will Self – the foreword was pretty incomprehensible, in all honesty, although the epilogue, detailing a night walk by Self, Beaumont and another author through south London to watch the sun rise over London from 16 miles away was a nice way to end it. 3.5/5.

Debbie Gilbert’s The Successful Mumpreneur is subtitled “How to work flexibly round your family doing what you love”, and it’s basically a guide to starting your own business. Actually the majority of it would be just as applicable to anyone thinking about freelancing or becoming self-employed, not just mums – it has sensible advice from someone who’s not only done it herself but now works to help other people navigating the move to self-employment. There are also examples throughout the book where women who have successfully made the move in order to work more flexibly with their family commitments talk about what they did. Sensible and down to earth, although I must admit I do find the term ‘mumpreneur’ a bit cheesy. 3/5.

How to be Right: … in a World Gone Wrong by James O’Brien is a quick but fantastic read. O’Brien hosts a daily phone-in show on the radio station LBC, and whilst some of his fellow LBC presenters are, let’s say, a bit more to the right of centre politically than he is (understatement: Nigel Farage used to be an LBC presenter), right-wing is the last thing you can accuse O’Brien of being. He has become famous for clips of conversations he has on his show where he examines and takes apart the arguments of his callers going viral, particularly on issues such as immigration and Brexit. Each of the eight chapters here focuses on a particular issue (the two aforementioned, plus LGBT rights, feminism, Islam, Trump, and others), going over the typical right-wing arguments that are presented on these topics and how he tries to explore them with his listeners. What I liked about this was that, contrary to the impression that you might have of him just wanting to lampoon and mock his callers, he seemed to genuinely want to understand why it was they believe what they do, and his realisation that you don’t actually have to mock or insult, just ask a couple of questions about why they are saying whatever it is, for the holes in their argument to be obvious. He seems to genuinely like many of his callers, and tries to respect them, even as he’s clearly angry about the politicians and media who are feeding them trite stories, soundbites and lies in order to fuel their outrage. Although a lot of what he wrote I basically agree with already, his chapter on the generation gap and the different expectations of different generations regarding things like income and home ownership was something that I hadn’t thought about before, so I feel like I learnt something as well as having my opinions agreed with by somebody else. Ultimately this book left me simultaneously both hopeful and profoundly depressed. As he wrote several times during the Brexit chapter (horribly paraphrased, sorry!), “I still don’t know what it is they think they’ve won”. 4.5/5.

First a disclaimer: Thirty-Seven Theorems of Incompleteness is the latest collection of poetry by my brother-in-law, Matt Kirkham. Who is a most excellent person. So I make no guarantee of objectivity here!

The blurb on the back of the book says: “This collection of poetry follows the marriage of logician Kurt Godel and his wife Adele through the tumult of the twentieth century”. I did look up Godel on wikipedia before I started reading this, because he’s not someone I was familiar with, and I think knowing a bit about his story (albeit not understanding the mathematical/philosophical theories he wrote about at all) did help with the poems. Like much poetry, I’m sure a lot of this passed me by, but the language is lovely and I’m happy that there are people out there painting with words and creating beauty. I’m giving this 4/5, but giving someone I know any score at all feels a bit weird! (not 5 because of my ongoing feelings of inadequacy when reading poetry!).