This interview never happened.† The transcript is how we’d deliver it.
Two excerpts laid out the way we deliver them. Change the conventions on the sheet and it follows; when it looks like what your study needs, send those settings with your quote request.
Conventions for this sheet, ringed in pen: change any of them
A bilingual Portuguese transcript example
Example study: primary care workforce · interview 03 · clean verbatimverbatim†
P1 = community health worker · Interviewer = study team
No audio plays. The timeline shows where each voice falls in the excerpt.
Então, pra começar, me conta um pouco como é o seu dia a dia na unidade.
So, to start, tell me a bit about what a typical day at the clinic is like for you.
SPEAKER_00 is the interviewer. Labels follow your codebook.
Olha, eu sou
machine draft: a gentecorrected: agente comunitária há, é… há uns oito anos. De manhã eu, eu passo namachine draft: USBcorrected: UBS, pego a agenda, e aí saio pra fazer as visitas na minhamachine draft: micro áreacorrected: microárea.Well, I’ve been a community health worker for about eight years. In the morning I stop by the UBS, pick up the schedule, and then go out to do home visits in my micro-area.
She said agente, her job. And UBS is the clinic, not a USB port. Microárea is one word.
Translator’s note UBS (Unidade Básica de Saúde): a primary care clinic in the SUS, Brazil’s public health system. Micro-area: the households assigned to one community health worker.
E quantas famílias você acompanha, mais ou menos?
And roughly how many families do you look after?
Speaker change missed. The question is the interviewer’s; P1 answers from 00:00:33.
Umas… Umas cento e cinquenta. Mas tem família que é mais tranquila, e tem família que você tem que estar em cima, sabe? Idoso sozinho, gestante que ainda não começou o pré-natal…
About a hundred and fifty. But some families are easier, and some families you have to keep a close eye on, you know? Older people living alone, pregnant women who haven’t started prenatal care yet…
“Estar em cima”: flag for the translator.
Translator’s note Estar em cima (literally “be on top of”): colloquial for close, frequent follow-up, nearer to “keep checking on” than to “stay on top of.”
E as visitas, você consegue fazer todas?
And the home visits, do you manage to get to all of them?
Nem sempre, né. Aí
machine draft: agentecorrected: a gente dá um jeito. Às vezes eu volto no fim da tarde, fora do horário, porque de manhã não tem ninguém em casa.Not always. So we find a way. Sometimes I go back late in the afternoon, after hours, because in the morning nobody’s home.
Here it’s a gente, “we.” Same sound, other word.
Translator’s note Dar um jeito: to find a way around a problem with whatever is at hand; close to “make do” or “work something out.”
E essas famílias que você tem que estar em cima, como é que você faz quando não encontra ninguém em casa?
And the families you have to keep a close eye on, what do you do when there’s nobody home?
Ah, aí eu pergunto pros vizinhos. A dona Cida[RESIDENT 1], da Rua das Flores[STREET 1], sabe de tudo que acontece ali. Ela mesma me falou que o seu Zé[RESIDENT 2] só vai no posto quando é o doutor Paulo[DOCTOR 1] que tá atendendo.
Oh, then I ask the neighborsneighbours. Dona Cida[RESIDENT 1], on Rua das Flores[STREET 1], knows everything that goes on there. She told me herself that Seu Zé[RESIDENT 2] only goes to the clinic when Dr. Paulo[DOCTOR 1] is the one seeing patients.
Four identifiers: three people and a street. Coded if you ask for de-identification.
Translator’s note Dona and Seu: respectful forms of address for older women and men, used with the first name and kept in the translation. Posto (posto de saúde): the everyday word for the UBS.Posto (posto de saúde): the everyday word for the UBS.
Labels and terms checked: eight turns, two voices, one missed change of speaker, four words fixed. Over to translation.
† The draft and the pen marks are drawn to show the kind of fixes a reviewer makes. They aren’t real software output, and the interview is one we wrote.
This is how we transcribe qualitative interviews for academic studies, and how the side-by-side translation works.
Focus group excerpt, six voices at one table
Example study: household shopping habits · group 2 · clean verbatimverbatim†
M = moderator · R1 to R5 = respondents
No audio plays. The timeline shows where each voice falls in the excerpt.
E a compra do mês, vocês fazem onde?
And the big monthly shopping trip, where do you do it?
SPEAKER_00 is the moderator.
Translator’s note Compra do mês: the once-a-month stock-up trip many households make, often timed around payday.
Eu faço no
machine draft: atacado e jácorrected: atacarejo. Compensa muito mais, cê leva o fardo e sai bem mais barato.I do it at the atacarejo. It’s much better value, you buy by the case and it works out a lot cheaper.
Atacarejo: one word, the store format.
Translator’s note Atacarejo (atacado + varejo, wholesale + retail): warehouse-style stores that sell in bulk to businesses and households alike. Kept in Portuguese: warehouse clubs are the nearest US format, but an atacarejo needs no membership.
[crosstalk] Mas nem tudo lá é mais barato, hein.
[crosstalk] Not everything there is cheaper, though.
Two voices here. Split and mark where they overlap.
[crosstalk] Não, tudo não, mas…
[crosstalk] No, not everything, but…
O óleo mesmo, eu achei mais caro que no mercadinho aqui do bairro. Tem que ficar esperta.
Cooking oil, for one. I found it pricier than at the little grocery store here in the neighborhoodneighbourhood. You have to stay sharp.
Translator’s note Ficar esperta: stay alert, don’t get caught out. The feminine ending (esperta, not esperto) shows a woman speaking about women, possibly herself; the English “you” can’t mark that.
E na hora de pagar, como é que vocês pagam essa compra?
And when it’s time to pay, how do you pay for all that?
No cartão, parcelado. Se der pra dividir em três sem juros, eu divido.
On the credit card, split into payments. If I can spread it over three months with no interest, I do.
Translator’s note Parcelado (sem juros): a card purchase the store splits into monthly payments, often interest-free. Common in Brazil for everyday purchases as well as large ones.
Eu prefiro o Pix, porque aí eu vejo o dinheiro saindo na hora. No cartão eu me perco.
I’d rather use Pix, because then I see the money go out right away. With the card I lose track.
Translator’s note Pix: Brazil’s instant payment system, run by the Central Bank; money moves in seconds.
[inaudible 00:41:44] …e a marca própria também, que melhorou muito.
[inaudible 00:41:44] …and the store brand too, it’s gottengot a lot better.
Labels and terms checked: nine turns, six voices, one merged block split into three, one word fixed. Over to translation.
† The draft and the pen marks are drawn to show the kind of fixes a reviewer makes. They aren’t real software output, and the focus group is one we wrote.
More on focus group transcription in Brazilian Portuguese, for agencies.
What the delivery report contains
Each delivery comes with a short report. It lists the files processed, the conventions used, and who reviewed them, so what your methods section needs is written down once, in one place.
The words marked on the report change with the settings on the sheet above.
delivery report · batch 1†
Example study: primary care workforce
Batch 1 is three interviews, interview-01 to interview-03: audio, two voices each, 2 h 41 min in total. They are transcribed in Brazilian Portuguese, clean verbatimverbatim, with the labels Interviewer and P1 and a timestamp at each change of speaker.conventions, as agreed The English sits beside the PortugueseThe English comes on its ownNo English translation was requested, in USUK spelling, with 14 translator’s notes.
[inaudible] is marked three times: interview-02 at 00:14:32, interview-03 at 00:31:07 and 00:38:50. Names stay as spoken.Names, places, and other identifiers are replaced with codes. Speech recognition, Whisper (whisper.cpp); speaker separation, pyannote; translation tools as listed in the project agreement.for your methods section
Reviewed by a native-speaker reviewer (the Portuguese) and a translator (the English).
† A fictitious report for the fictitious study above.
Ask for a pilot on your own audio
The pilot runs on a short excerpt of one of your recordings, in the conventions you choose.
Pick a short excerpt that’s typical of your recordings, including a hard passage if you have one.
Fictitious sample · riverabrazil.com/samples