Bonus 78: How we make Lingthusiasm transcripts - Interview with Sarah Dopierala (Patreon)

All of the Lingthusiasm main episodes and bonus episodes have transcripts, which involves some interesting technical challenges, including writing words in lots of languages, choosing between writing examples in their conventional spelling versus according to their phonetic value, and translating pauses and intonation into punctuation and paragraph breaks.

In this behind the scenes bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about the linguistic process of transcribing podcast episodes with Sarah Dopierala, whose name you may recognize from the credits at the end of the show! We talk about how Sarah's background in linguistics helps her with the technical words and phonetic transcriptions in Lingthusiasm episodes, her own research into converbs as a linguistics graduate student at Goethe University Frankfurt, and the linguistic tendencies that she's noticed from years of transcribing Lauren and Gretchen (guess which of us uses more quotative speech!). We also talk about how Sarah has found it more fun and efficient to use less automated/AI tools in her transcribing workflow over time (hint: it's related to "link Suzy as in"), and the process she goes through to edit the spoken version so that it reads well on the page.

All of which to say: Sarah's job is not going away anytime soon, and it's thanks to your support as patrons that we can keep paying her to make these beautifully edited transcripts. As a reminder, all the main episode transcripts can be found at lingthusiasm.com/transcripts (and on each episode's shownotes page), the bonus episode transcripts are linked to from each bonus episode's shownotes, and this episode's transcript is here.

Read the transcript here.

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Sarah on Twitter
• Wikipedia entry for 'converb'
• Wikipedia entry for the Abkhaz language
• Many Minds podcast, which Sarah also does transcripts for!

Lingthusiasm video episodes mentioned in this episode:

• Why do we gesture when we talk?
• Villages, gifs, and children: Researching signed languages in real-world contexts with Lynn Hou
• Bringing stories to life in Auslan - Interview with Gabrielle Hodge

You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript of this episode is available as a Google Doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Mastodon. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page. Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

To chat about this episode and other lingthusiastic topics with your fellow linguistics fans, join us on the Lingthusiasm Discord server.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.