Transcription tales. Or: Let not love’s labour be lost

Drawing heavily on my MA dissertation but influenced by subsequent transcription experience, I relate how a technical problem in the recording of an interview necessitated deliberations on the nature and purpose of transcription that continues to have repercussions for my transcription practice and, furthermore, for my understanding of research as praxis. I suggest that transcription is value-laden, an ethical as well as technical undertaking, and that it brings the tension between practical considerations and methodological fidelity into sharp focus. I also highlight the way in which transcripts themselves are simultaneously more and less than they seem. Further, in taking a storied approach to these issues I provide the reader with clues to my methodological allegiances and my conceptualisation of transcription as comprising a set of interpretative, meaning making practices.

Keywords: transcription, ethics, research values