Erin Steck Curtis and Professor Don Norton, English Language
Oral history is popular among many academic circles as a medium of communicating a more personal, intimate view of the past than is commonly found in the dry commentary of a standard history text. The emotion included in a eye-witness account becomes its own commentary as feelings and facts are intertwined in the telling of a personal story, history from an ordinary person’s point of view. It is important to understand history not only as a series of events, but as actual experiences that shape people’s lives. Speaker and interviewer (or reader) form a unique emotional bond in the telling of firsthand experiences—it is as though they relive the experience together through the telling of it. Seemingly everyday events become extraordinary occurrences when witnessed through the eyes of another. Accounts of wartime experiences and even everyday life offer valuable insight as to how things used to be. The emotion contained in these eyewitness accounts spans time, making history real and exciting.
Traditionally, oral history fits into the same genre as folklore. Interviews are often transcribed word for word to retain the voice of the speaker, which can make for a rather unwieldy text as the transcriber translates all the idiosyncrasies of speech into writing. For this reason, literal translations of oral history text are seldom read. Authors may refer to a specific interview or even summarize the whole of it, but at this point the lure of the original story is lost. Oral history can also be edited to be used in an essay format, but again, the original voice of the speaker is easily lost when the humanizing elements of speech are removed to make the text fit into the conventions of the written word.
Different conventions govern the use of language in speech and in writing. The best way to preserve oral history is to make an audio recording of the interview, but for easier access it becomes necessary to convert the interview into writing. The style of transcription, however, must fit the intended use and audience. Historians favor a light edit of an interview, preferring not to disturb a text that will be used for gathering information; likewise, folklorists would transcribe an interview verbatim, neither adding nor deleting anything from the story. An interview transcribed for information gathering purposes would not appropriate for those who are recording family history because they would most likely be interested in the stories an interview contains rather than other technical information. Family historians, then, would favor a more heavily edited interview that captures the tone and voice of the speaker, but is still easy to read.
Although many books have been written about how to conduct a successful interview, very few recommendations currently exist for transcribing oral history into an appropriate text for family history purposes. One interview transcription style does not—and cannot—fit everyone’s needs. My research with oral history interviews focused mainly on reconciling the conventions of speech and writing while retaining the authentic voice of the speaker and satisfying the intended audience.
After researching concerning currently accepted transcribing practices in different genres of oral history, I was surprised to find that even the foremost authors in the oral history disagree substantially on how transcribing is to be done. There is no generally accepted method of converting an audio recording to written text. The process seems simple enough, but there are many debatable issues at hand. Should filler words such as “ah” and “um” be included in the transcript for authenticity, or are they distracting and cumbersome for the reader? What license, if any, should the transcriber have to edit the spoken word?
My research began with gathering approximately fifteen interviews from immediate and extended family members, and also from war veterans now living in the Provo area. The length of the tape-recorded interviews ranged from twenty minutes to two and a half hours. The speakers I chose provided me with a wide variety of subject material with which to practice transcribing. Two hours of tape took me on average five hours to transcribe, depending on the quality of the tape, my own familiarity with the topic being discussed in the interview, and the willingness of the speaker to elaborate on interview questions.
As I began to transcribe, I adopted a reader-friendly style in which I sought to preserve the original voice of the speaker while carefully placing the words into a document that conformed insomuch as possible to the conventions of the written word. I wanted the stories I transcribed to be readable, yet recognizable as the spoken word, not as originating not on paper. In order to do this, I routinely included colloquialisms (words, word forms, or phrases that are commonly spoken, but not written) in my transcriptions to give the “flavor” of speech, but not so many as to distract the reader from the story itself.
My intention was to write a handbook outlining an appropriate method of transcribing interviews such as these that might be included in a compilation of family history records, but this proved difficult as I learned about and experienced the subtle, individual decisions and judgment calls inherent in transcribing. After having gained more transcribing experience, it seems more an art form than a technical process. I believe a handbook of this sort would be a valuable tool to family historians especially, but the art of transcribing must be taught through example, observation, and experience rather than through an outline of processes and rules as I had previously envisioned. My final report regarding this research consisted of a comparative review of literature and a case study analysis of specific transcribing and editing techniques, and how they function in different forms of oral history.
The most rewarding aspect of my research by far was the time I spent with my family members learning about their childhoods, their courtships and marriages, and their memories of my deceased grandfather, whom I have never met. The emotional bond formed between storyteller an listener is even stronger when the relationship begins before the story is told. I look forward to collecting and transcribing more family interviews in the future, perfecting the art of preserving oral stories in written form so that they will be available for generations to come