FAQs Friday!!!

Hi everyone!!!

We thought it would be helpful to send a summary of the inaudibles we had this week so this way we can learn something new every week, and maybe one of these inaudibles will appear in the next interview you’re transcribing, and it’ll save you some time!

We all know how much time we spend researching things, so everything helps! 🙂

We also want to include some of the questions you ask us, hoping our answers might help you in the future.

1- AREN’T ACRONYMS TRICKY?

– Unless they—LDRs took days, too.  

LDR? What is that? 

Well, you might be interested to know that the LDR rate is the number of departures minus those delayed for maintenance reasons, divided by total departures.

Check out this link!

2- WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SOMEBODY MENTIONS PHRASES IN A LANGUAGE THAT’S NOT ENGLISH?

 Well, we do our research, of course! This week, Meia deserves a gold star for this one 🙂

– I spoke a little bit of the language. I could still—[???00:14:05_Speaking Korean]. 

What was the veteran saying, you might be wondering? Well, he said, “Annyeong Hasimnikka,” which means good day in Korean. 

What languages do you speak???

3- THIS WAS A COMPLICATED ONE!

So the glass industry was in a city called [???inaudible___00:45:39]. [in former Czechoslovakia] 

Not easy, right?

 So John stepped in and said this:

I’m hearing Neugablonz, but this is complicated – Gablonz is a glassmaking city in Czechoslovakia. Neugablonz is a glassmaking center founded by refugees from Gablonz after the war, but it’s in Germany. I’m definitely hearing that extra syllable at the start of the word though – is there any chance he’s talking about the one in Germany? 

And Beth added some more information:

I think John’s nailed it, he’s right, it IS complicated. There is no Czechoslovakia anymore; they separated in 1993. Gablonz was in the Sudentenland, which was one of Hitler’s first moves:

The Sudetenland (/suːˈdeɪtənlænd/ German: [zuˈdeːtn̩lant]; Czech and Slovak: Sudety) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the border districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia since the Middle Ages. Sudetenland had been, since the 9th century, an integral part of the Czech state (first within the Duchy of Bohemia and later the Kingdom of Bohemia) both geographically and politically.

We’re doing some serious detective work here! 

Did you learn something new today? I really hope so! 

FAQs Friday!!!

Hi everyone!!!

We thought it would be helpful to send a summary of the inaudibles we had this week so this way we can learn something new every week, and maybe one of these inaudibles will appear in the next interview you’re transcribing, and it’ll save you some time!

We all know how much time we spend researching things, so everything helps! 🙂

We also want to include some of the questions you ask us, hoping our answers might help you in the future.

1- AREN’T ACRONYMS TRICKY?

– Unless they—LDRs took days, too.  

LDR? What is that? 

Well, you might be interested to know that the LDR rate is the number of departures minus those delayed for maintenance reasons, divided by total departures.

Check out this link!

2- WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SOMEBODY MENTIONS PHRASES IN A LANGUAGE THAT’S NOT ENGLISH?

 Well, we do our research, of course! This week, Meia deserves a gold star for this one 🙂

– I spoke a little bit of the language. I could still—[???00:14:05_Speaking Korean]. 

What was the veteran saying, you might be wondering? Well, he said, “Annyeong Hasimnikka,” which means good day in Korean. 

What languages do you speak???

3- THIS WAS A COMPLICATED ONE!

So the glass industry was in a city called [???inaudible___00:45:39]. [in former Czechoslovakia] 

Not easy, right?

 So John stepped in and said this:

I’m hearing Neugablonz, but this is complicated – Gablonz is a glassmaking city in Czechoslovakia. Neugablonz is a glassmaking center founded by refugees from Gablonz after the war, but it’s in Germany. I’m definitely hearing that extra syllable at the start of the word though – is there any chance he’s talking about the one in Germany? 

And Beth added some more information:

I think John’s nailed it, he’s right, it IS complicated. There is no Czechoslovakia anymore; they separated in 1993. Gablonz was in the Sudentenland, which was one of Hitler’s first moves:

The Sudetenland (/suːˈdeɪtənlænd/ German: [zuˈdeːtn̩lant]; Czech and Slovak: Sudety) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the border districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia since the Middle Ages. Sudetenland had been, since the 9th century, an integral part of the Czech state (first within the Duchy of Bohemia and later the Kingdom of Bohemia) both geographically and politically.

We’re doing some serious detective work here! 

Did you learn something new today? I really hope so! 

This may seem tangential to transcription, but understanding oral history speakers is more than a matter of recording the words. We’ve got to try to understand all the nuances of their speech as well. This video from the CDC illustrates the challenges we face in listening to people—often speaking about incidents that happened long ago—in a time we can’t even remember and have no direct experience with.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

CDC 24/7: Saving Lives, Protecting People™

Do You Have the Words?

Know your audience is one of the basic principles of communication. Learn your audience’s values, beliefs, and preferred words before developing your material. This is especially important when communicating with an audience whose language is different from yours. Some cultures and languages may not have words for the terms you want to use.

A (now retired) CDC public health educator and her team faced this challenge when they wanted to create messaging about colorectal cancer prevention for Iñupiaq tribal communities in Alaska. American Indian and Alaska Native people have much higher rates of colorectal cancer than non-Hispanic White people, but until recently, the Iñupiaq language lacked words for cancer, screening, and other relevant terms. Watch this video to find out what the educator and her team did to overcome this challenge to clear communication. 

Culture and Language Video

Also, check out the Clear Communication Index, a research-based tool that helps you develop and assess communication materials for your intended audience.

This may seem tangential to transcription, but understanding oral history speakers is more than a matter of recording the words. We’ve got to try to understand all the nuances of their speech as well. This video from the CDC illustrates the challenges we face in listening to people—often speaking about incidents that happened long ago—in a time we can’t even remember and have no direct experience with.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

CDC 24/7: Saving Lives, Protecting People™

Do You Have the Words?

Know your audience is one of the basic principles of communication. Learn your audience’s values, beliefs, and preferred words before developing your material. This is especially important when communicating with an audience whose language is different from yours. Some cultures and languages may not have words for the terms you want to use.

A (now retired) CDC public health educator and her team faced this challenge when they wanted to create messaging about colorectal cancer prevention for Iñupiaq tribal communities in Alaska. American Indian and Alaska Native people have much higher rates of colorectal cancer than non-Hispanic White people, but until recently, the Iñupiaq language lacked words for cancer, screening, and other relevant terms. Watch this video to find out what the educator and her team did to overcome this challenge to clear communication. 

Culture and Language Video

Also, check out the Clear Communication Index, a research-based tool that helps you develop and assess communication materials for your intended audience.

For the Love of Sentences

Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times

For just this week, as a gift to ourselves, let’s have a politics-free edition of this feature. And let’s begin on a musical note. In The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., Josh Shaffer pondered the peculiarity of the bagpipe, “shaped like an octopus in plaid pants, sounding to some like a goose with its foot caught in an escalator and played during history’s most lopsided battles — by the losing side.” (Thanks to Mardy Grothe of Southern Pines, N.C., and Pam James of Durham, N.C., among others, for nominating this.)

On to matters demographic. In The Washington Post, Andrew Van Dam examined Michigan’s boom-and-bust cycles, noting: “In 1950 and 1960, it still ranked in the top 15 for growth, as its factories vacuumed up workers from around the country and spat out cornflakes and Chryslers.” Later, though, “fan-belt production gave way to rust-belt destruction.” (Ellen Herman, Berkeley Heights, N.J.)

Also in The Washington Post, Ron Charles looked back at Norman Mailer, who “belonged to a time when writers could be jerks — and worse. He was virile, vile and viral.” Charles added: “Perhaps it’s a mercy that Mailer died just a few months after Twitter captured the public’s attention. Were the Great American Novelist alive today, the furies would peck his bones bare.” (Marc Gunther, Bethesda, Md.)

In The New Yorker, Anthony Lane reviewed the documentary “Turn Every Page,” about the writer Robert Caro’s relationship with the editor Robert Gottlieb: “The movie is directed by Gottlieb’s daughter, Lizzie Gottlieb, who was forbidden, by her two subjects, to film them in scribente delicto, as they toil over a manuscript. ‘They said the work between a writer and an editor is too private,’ she tells us. (I sniff an opportunity here for an underground trade: basement peepshows, where you feed a nickel into a slot and watch one guy remove another guy’s dangling participles.)” (Trena Cleland, Eugene, Ore.)

In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols flashed back to “Match Game,” a television hit from the 1970s, “when people dressed like their home appliances in a riot of autumn rust, harvest gold, and avocado green.” (Tina Seibel, Upper Gwynedd, Penn., and Nancy Dolan, Oxnard, Calif., among others)

In The Herald-Mail, Tim Rowland analyzed Bed Bath & Beyond’s closing of scores of stores: “Even in the best of times, no one paid full price for anything at BBB due to its ubiquitous discount mailers. In fact, there are aboriginal tribes in Malaysia whose only contact with the outside world is a 20 percent off coupon for Bed Bath & Beyond.” Also: “On the very rare chance you didn’t have one, the person in front of you in line would invariably try to pass one (or six) off on you, whether you wanted them or not. For years, BBB coupons were the zucchini of retail.” (George Gale, Peru, N.Y.)

In the Connecticut Post, Keith Raffel urged a reappraisal of what law schools teach, so that students “see the practice of law fundamentally as a calling to do justice, not simply as a portal to power and plenty.” (Susan Samuelson, Boston)

In The Globe & Mail of Toronto, Cathal Kelly reflected on Novak Djokovic’s defeat of Stefanos Tsitsipas to win the Australian Open: “On paper, Tsitsipas is the future of the sport. He’s a bigger Federer, a sort of Greek Army Knife of tennis weapons. But every time he faces Djokovic, he looks like a guy with his arm extended in horror while a slow-moving steamroller comes at him.” (Barbara Love, Kingston, Ontario)

And in The Times, Margaret Renkl examined the nature of grief: “For six months my father was dying, and then he kept dying for two years more. I was still working and raising a family, but running beneath the thin soil of my own life was a river of death.” (David Calfee, Lake Forest, Ill.)

To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please use this link to email me and include your name and place of residence.