Transcription (linguistics)

The transcription (Latin transcriptio) is the systematic representation of an oral form by means of written signs. The concept of phonetic transcription is related to this general definition of transcription. In a more restricted sense, a transcription is an adaptation by means of graphic characters of an expression of another language or of non-standard peculiar speech using the orthography and graphic conventions of a language or the standard language.

When there are two languages involved, that is, the intention is to transcribe expressions from one into the other, the transcription consists of approximating the phonological or phonetic form of the expression of the first language in an approximate way through phonemes of the second language and using, additionally, their spelling conventions. Do not confuse transcription with transliteration (which tries to reflect the original spelling using a different writing system) or translation (which tries to represent the semantic content of the original).

In the academic discipline of linguistics, transcription is an essential part of the methodology of (among others) phonetics, conversation analysis, dialectology, and sociolinguistics. It also has an important role in various subfields of speech technology. The most common examples of non-academic transcripts are court hearing proceedings, such as a criminal trial (by a court reporter) or a doctor's recorded voice notes (medical transcription).

Transcription and transliteration

The transcription to a language means to write with the character system of this language the sound of a word from another language in an approximate way [although in the particular case of phonetic transcription it can be totally exact]. On the other hand, transliteration is based on exactly reproducing the writing (the graphemes) of one language with the graphemes of the other (for example, transliterating a Cyrillic text using the extended Latin alphabet):

• The transcript tries to faithfully represent the seals or sounds of one language with the orthographic conventions of another language,
• Transliteration tries to faithfully represent only the graphems.

Transcription into Spanish

The Spanish phonological inventory (including phonemes of all varieties) includes 24 phonemes, five vowels /a, e, i, o, u/ and 19 consonants /b, p, d, t, ʧ, g, k; f, s, θ, ʝ, x, m, n, ʎ, ɲ, ɾ, r/ Furthermore, most Spanish speakers are capable of pronouncing frequent phonemes in English loanwords such as /h, ʃ, ŋ, w, ʦ/, for these sounds and similar sounds it is common to use the following phonemic transcriptions:

This list is restricted and there are no universally accepted transcriptions for sounds like /v, z, ʣ, ʒ, ʤ, ʐ, ʑ, ʥ, ħ, ʁ, ʕ, ʋ, ɬ/ and other consonantal sounds, or for vowel sounds such as /y, ɨ, ʉ, ɯ, ø, ə, ʌ / in these cases various criteria are used, not always consistently. Some graphic representations proposed for these sounds by different authors are:

In cases that include phonemes without very clear equivalents in Spanish, it may be convenient to give next to the approximate transcription, the transliteration or the strict phonetic transcription.