Advice on transcribing videos

[elsmandino]

Thanks to another user's very helpful advice (Purangi) on another thread, I have been reading up on the benefits of transcribing videos.

My listening skills are particularly poor and am hoping that this approach will really help me with my French.

I would be really grateful for some advice on how best to go about transcribing a video.

I am thinking of transcribing the videos taken from this site:

https://www.1jour1actu.com/

They are short and, whilst not for foreign learners, they are aimed at younger people (and therefore, I hope, are going to be easier to deal with).

Any tips would be much appreciated.

[Kat]

There is not much to it, just choose a video and get started.

Some things that I find helpful:

Unless you are a very technically minded person, don't go overboard with fancy tools.

There are several software programs for transcription, however, pen and paper work just fine. Technology can be a distraction when you should focus on the language.

Choose small chunks to transcribe at a time or you might loose interest very quickly.

Transcribing a video will take longer than you think and it can be quite frustrating because it will make you realize what you don't know yet. I've watched videos and would have sworn that I understand 100% of the content, yet when I started to transcribe them, I noticed all the small bits and pieces (prepositions, filler words, correct endings etc.) that I hadn't really understood. Our brain fills a lot of those gaps for us when we concentrate on the overall meaning instead of the details and structures.

You don't need to achieve a perfect result in the first run-through.

Write down what you understand and don't let the bits and pieces you don't understand discourage you. Just leave an empty space for the missing parts.
Then watch the same scene again and try to fill those gaps. Rinse and repeat.

Sometimes it helps to just let an especially difficult part sit for a while and try again in a day or even in a week.

[Sayonaroo]

I recommend this strategy somebody posted on reddit. It involves slowing and speeding up the audio.

https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearni ... nt/d7fsnfl

[elsmandino]

Thank you - that is really good advice.

I have had a go and, as you said, I really did not get anywhere near 100%.

I left blanks and each time I went back, I added a bit more, up to a point.

When I was learning German, I found listening a little bit easier - even if I had never heard a heard word before, as everything is pronounced, I could easily look it up as I had a very good idea of how it would be approximately spelt.

I am finding that with French, if there is a word I cannot understand, I try to look it up and find that it doesn't exist. Hopefully, this is something that will go away in time, but it is a bit frustrating.

[elsmandino]

Great idea about manipulating the speed of the audio - I wonder if that might help me "zone in" on the missing words.

[golyplot]

When I was learning German, I found listening a little bit easier - even if I had never heard a heard word before, as everything is pronounced, I could easily look it up as I had a very good idea of how it would be approximately spelt.

I am finding that with French, if there is a word I cannot understand, I try to look it up and find that it doesn't exist. Hopefully, this is something that will go away in time, but it is a bit frustrating.

This is so true. French orthography and phonology are only distantly related. I think French is the second worst among all European languages, with the obvious exception of English.

[elsmandino]

Do you think I am better off trying to find something else with a transcript (in case I really cannot figure out what is being said) or do you think I should stick with those videos?

[Stefan]

Go for short material (<3 min) accessible through mp3 so you can download it and open in some kind of software where you can jump back 5-10 seconds, pause/start, etc. Trying to transcribe a target language in real time without pause/rewind would be extremely difficult. Make sure to use material where you have access to a written version. Otherwise, you'll have no idea if you're close to correct.

In German, Top-Thema is close to ideal but I don't know what the French market looks like.

[Kat]

I am finding that with French, if there is a word I cannot understand, I try to look it up and find that it doesn't exist. Hopefully, this is something that will go away in time, but it is a bit frustrating.

I don't speak French but I guess English isn't much better, at least for beginners.

If you have figured out most of a sentence, you could also try another approach. In a video you have lots of context -- visual clues, the previous and following sentence etc. Think about which word would logically fit into your blank, look it up and see if one of the French translations matches what you hear in the video.

Google's autocomplete function is also very useful if you are missing part of an idiom or a set expression.

Do you think I am better off trying to find something else with a transcript (in case I really cannot figure out what is being said) or do you think I should stick with those videos?

In theory it's very good idea to find something with a transcript.

For me that didn't work, though, because it made me cheat. When I knew that there was a transcript available, I gave up way too quickly and looked the difficult parts up instead of trying to figure them out myself. And for some reason most of the stuff that interested me didn't come with subtitles or transcripts, so it wasn't really an option. Transcribing videos takes a lot of time and I wouldn't have spend that amount of time on content that doesn't really capture my interest.

Of course, it also depends on your level if that's possible. I only tried to transcribe videos later on when I wasn't a complete beginner anymore.

[NoManches]

Probably mentioned but I downloaded to mp3 format. From there, upload to Audacity. You can "loop" the audio so it will play it over and over again until you are able to transcribe and move on.

One suggestion: Don't get into the habit of transcribing without understanding. I found that when I was transcribing to improve my listening skills in Spanish, I would understand the words but not the whole meaning. This was because I was so focused on the the small things but not the big picture. So after transcribing I'd spend some time listening to the entire audio and focus on "the big picture". Although, I was transcribing some very lengthy videos so my results may have been different.

Good luck!