Technology in the Field

Abstract

If you are going to the trouble of travelling a long way to ask someone questions about their language, you need to have some way of recording their answers. You might want the recordings later on so that you can check your transcriptions. Perhaps the narratives you’ve recorded will be used for a talking book, or maybe you transcribed your recordings with one aim in mind and later will wish to go back to them for other data. Perhaps you aren’t that interested in phonetics, but the language is known for an interesting and rare phenomenon that your recorded data would shed light on. Transcriptions are a pale shadow compared to the original audio and video.