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Transcribing the Dharma

We need help transcribing the audio recordings of Culadasa’s talks. Transcribing is creating a word-for-word document from an audio file. You don’t need anything except your computer.

If you can help, contact us by adding a comment to this post. You can tell us which talk you would like to transcribe, or we can give you one. Don’t start until you contact us, as we need to make sure you aren’t working on the same file as someone else.

How to transcribe

Transcribing can be tricky since you have to do two things at once – control the audio playback, and type up the document. If you are using an audio player program on your computer, It helps if the player:

  • takes up only a tiny bit of real estate on your screen
  • stays “in front” of your word processing screen
  • Uses “hot keys” to stop and start, so you don’t have to move your cursor off of your document.

For these reasons, we suggest you download and try Express Scribe to play the audio. (It’s free!)

More “how to” details and ideas:

  • First, download the audio file to your computer.
  • Use any common editing software
  • Don’t try to make the transcript grammatically correct, that will happen in a subsequent step.
  • Use the marks: (??) and (1:34). This indicates words or phrases you aren’t sure of and the elapsed time where it occurs.
  • We are experimenting with voice recognition software (such as Dragon Naturally Speaking), and you can, too. There at least 2 ways to do this:
    • Use Express Scribe’s built in capability to feed the audio file through the voice recognition software.
    • Listen to the original audio and repeat what you hear into a microphone that feeds the voice recognition software.
  • Professional transcribers use a foot pedal to control the audio. If you have one, Express Scribe will work with it.

Thank you!

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