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Language Documentation in West AfricaJuly 26 2010

Winneba, Ghana

David Nathan & Sophie SalffnerEndangered Languages Archive

Hans Rausing Endangered Languages ProjectSOAS, University of London

Audio & video:lessons from

our first beach visit

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This session

Goals to bring out what we learned from the

documentation recording events of 20 July … to enable us to make great recordings

next time!

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a quick reminder of audio workflow …

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Audio workflow

who/what/where /why/how do you want to record?

contact people

audio training

equipment & budget

assemble, test, practise

Before you go

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Audio workflow

transport safely

check environment, situations, permissions

make test recordings

local training & collaboration

On site, before recording

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Audio workflow

record!

monitor!

collect metadata

label check quality

monitor

Sessions

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Audio workflow

label check quality

backup add information (transcriptions, annotations, metadata etc)

After sessions

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Audio workflow

send samples to archive

add information (transcriptions, annotations, metadata etc)

... package and send to archive

Later

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Documentation workflow

documentation goals

research, arrangements

preparation etc

something happened

recordings + metadata

we recorded

media resources“data”

social and physical context

transfer, convert,share

elicitation

linguistic explanation

linguistic analysis

archiving

community support

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How can we do this?

Reflect on experiences – at beach, and before and after

Review recorded materials Revisit equipment, skills, choices, methods Check how all this fitted with goals

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Documentation recording concepts

“data collection” ???

goals outcomes

events

methods

equipment

review

review

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Group brainstorming

in your project groups, discuss and formulate: at least 4 points of learning, or suggestions

for improvement make them concrete

groups will share these points after your discussion

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Discussion and sharing

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Some suggestions (general)

general - we didn't encourage or observe much activity - we could have planned better and also been more flexible e.g. ask someone to walk along the beach and

describes the various boats, crews etc ask someone to take us on a tour around

the boat one of us asks to be taught how to do

something I noticed that there was a lot of banter on

the boats and between the crews

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Some suggestions (general)

the nature of our presence and interaction probably influenced how people responded (and didn't respond), we could have been more prepared, thoughtful, flexible, and adventurous

we noticed various activities etc that while maybe difficult to capture the event's language, it could be useful to video or photograph them and then use them to elicit accounts later (e.g. launching)

there were some problems because the beach fishing situation seems to be populated by men, and the consultants we used to help later were younger women

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Some suggestions (general)

some interviewed people turned out to not be Effutu speakers so we could have been clearer about who we interacted with, and been prepared for what kind of material would be useful to collect from non-Effutu speakers

we didn't take much opportunity of using the authentic social settings to elicit real social and situated interactions

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Some suggestions (general)

we didn't practice shooting/recording first (to check light, sound etc) before approaching consultants

we didn’t really check out the situation on/around boats

i.e. we should have used some of the time to research the situation, not go directly into recording consultants

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Some suggestions (general)

some problems with equipment preparation, e.g. batteries not charged

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Some suggestions (audio)

level and nature of background noise means that close mic-ing and dead cat necessary (also checking and monitoring)

if possible also check out best direction to record (away from sea) and possible damping

settings know how to select them know what settings to use (WAV, 16 bit, 44

MHz, stereo or mono as required) set audio input level according to changing

situation

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Some suggestions (video)

microphone needs to be close to speaker (due to background noise sources) - it cannot be camera-inbuilt or mounted on camera

limited space between boats - little space for tripod, and hard to get framing wide enough for multiple speakers or capturing gesture

light difficult would be better in morning or afternoon use backlight compensation might need to ask people to turn or move

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Some suggestions (video)

settings (again) know how to select them know what settings to use (turn off AGC,

use backlight compensation) set audio input level according to changing

situation

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I guessed …

that you would not mention metadata so far what metadata did you collect? (without clear documentation goals, it might

be hard to be explicit) for a documentation of fishing narratives,

procedures, and knowledge, what metadata might be collected?

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Review of recordings

let’s look at (and listen to) some of your recordings

what factors will we take into account?

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Some evaluation factors

moving image informative? (cf goals! – but be flexible) image clarity? aesthetic quality?

audio signal (= information) noise (= negative information) listenability content

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More evaluation factors

do visual and audio media co-ordinate (ie complement each other)?

what is the documentation value of this recording?

uniqueness?

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Evaluate and discuss your recordings

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Summary and conclusion

each group make a concrete list of “to do”, “to learn”, and “to get” for next time

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End