What is a phonetic transcription?
Writing like this gives the reader an idea of how the word ought to be pronounced. In transcription, it’s used to give future readers an idea of the way the spoken words should be said. The most commonly used phonetic symbol is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It’s also what appears in the dictionary.
Even if you have no idea what a word means, reading the IPA will give you an inkling of how it’s pronounced. The most interesting part is that IPA works for more than just the English language.
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What is word stress?
This is usually simply called stress. It usually occurs in words with more than one syllable especially when one of those syllables has to be emphasized and pronounced with a higher tone than the rest. In this situation, we say that syllable is stressed. In the word invalid that we’ve mentioned earlier, the stress is on the second.
There’s a special symbol to express that a syllable is to be stressed. It’s a vertical line like this (ᴵ). Once this symbol is precedes a syllable, it must be stressed. If a word only has a single syllable, the symbol will be omitted because there’s no need for it.
Some transcriptionists use other methods to identify stress. Some put the vertical line after the stressed syllable while others may underline it.
How do you represent the difference between British and American words?
Although British and American English have generally the same words with a slightly different variation in spelling or pronunciation, in phonetic transcription these differences are often highlighted. There are two ways to do this.
The first is to use separate transcriptions to depict both British and American English. For instance, dot with the American pronunciation is /da:t/ while with the British pronunciation, it’s /dᶛt/.
This symbol can be seen in many dictionaries including the Oxford, Cambridge and Longman Advanced Learner’s Dictionaries. The problem with using the system of transcription is that each word has to have two transcriptions which can take a lot of space. Not to mention the time the transcriptionist is going to spend on it.
Another method American and English pronunciation can be differentiated between is to use one single compromised transcription to depict both. In such a situation, the British phoneme symbols are often used. You can see more of this method in the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary.
Even though the use of phonetic transcription may be limited to a number of needs, it facilitates the accurate pronunciation of words in any language as long as the phonetic spelling of such word is accurate. In language studies, phonetic transcription can be used by both students and teachers to make pronunciation of certain words easier and more precise.
Phonetic v phonemic transcription
In the narrow sense, phonetic transcription notes the sounds used in the words said by a particular speaker. It focuses on the notion that every sound has a symbol that closely applies to it. Unfortunately, this type of transcription can become too complex and hard to read by people who are not very familiar with these symbols. This is where phonemic transcription comes in.
Phonemic transcriptions are broader than phonetic transcriptions. With them, it’s possible for two similar sounds to share the same symbol as long as the meaning of the word is not affected at all. Thus, we can say a phonemic transcription is not as cumbersome as a phonemic transcription.
A broad transcription may be preferable to a narrow one but might not be the best choice for some specialists.
Do you need phonetic transcription?
Phonetic transcription is something that’s peculiar to a niche. For general purposes, regular transcription will be more than enough. In fact, phonetic transcription can be very confusing for readers. If you just want a transcription that can be read by just anyone, a simple but quality transcription should suffice.
When can you use phonetic transcription?
- If there’s need to know the accurate pronunciation of a word in English or in another language.
- If parts of the text need to be read out loud and you have no idea what how some of the words should be pronounced because they’re in a foreign language or contain unfamiliar words.
- If you’re going to be using the document for sociophonetic, forensic or pathological analysis.
- If the audio contains a large number of industry specific terms and you or other future readers will benefit greatly from learning how such words are pronounced.
Unless there’s special need for it, phonetic transcription is an unnecessary addition that can be your document difficult to read.
These days, most online dictionaries have a playback option to teach how words are pronounced. So, if the foreign or unfamiliar words in the document are not that numerous, it’s more practical to use a regular transcription service. You or other future readers can run a quick online search to figure out how the words are pronounced if it’s necessary.
Philips SpeechLive provides regular transcriptions with up to 99% accuracy. Our trained professionals are excellent at what they do and no one has to go out of their way to learn phonetic symbols to read it.
How phonetic transcription is done
If you've decided that you need phonetic transcription for audio, video or document files, you can begin to explore the options you have to achieve that.
There are mainly two options available for you. The first is to get a phonetic transcription service and the second is to do it with a phonetic transcription software.
Phonetic transcription software
These are programs with the capacity to translate a piece of text into phonetic symbols. These phonetic symbols can be of any kind including the IPA which is the most popular one. Language learners who are just new at English can benefit from this sort of transcription since they also have the side benefit of learning how to pronounce the words in the document.
Businesses use phonetic transcription software to conduct businesses verbally by making it easier to pronounce foreign words.
What phonetic transcription software is good for is to process a sample of language, from written or oral text and translate that into phonetic format. This is usually done by inputting the written document into the software. While this may not be as accurate as having a human being carry out the transcription by getting a transcription service, it’s still very effective.
While a transcription software may be able to carry out phonetic transcription to some extent, it lacks a certain human quality and words with similar pronunciations may not be pronounced correctly especially if you’re using phonetic transcription software with audio files.
When it comes to typed documents, phonetic transcription software have proven to be reliable so far though to get any real value for them, you may have to subscribe even if you just want to transcribe only one document.
Phonetic transcription services
There are companies that offer phonetic transcription services. At Philips SpeechLive, we offer orthographic transcription at fair prices, with guaranted high accuracy rates. Our professionals can provide transcription in a number of languages including English, French and German.
