Editors of oral history-type pieces: how much editing do you do?

August 30, 2015 5:12 AM

I'm editing a series of long interview transcriptions that need to stay in their original question-and-answer format. Where would you draw the editing line?

A similar question was answered here, but that was in the world of articles, where you have the ability to add "implied ellipses" as the best answer put it (eg "quote someone's words here," then add a few words in between before "quoting something else they said").

The transcripts I'm editing are extremely long, need to stay in q&a format (so not quite like oral history where quotes seem to be arranged by topic), and of course have all the jumbled, garbled stuff you'd expect from people thinking on their feet in an interview situation. They're meant to be read, so I feel I have a duty as an editor to make things more concise and easier to read. But is that a good idea, or even ethical?

Among the things I'd like to do in ascending order of seems-like-a-bad-idea (all of which I'm sure we've all seen people do in any real-world editing room):

• Tweak words to make the meaning clear (add a missing word, clarify the name of a person or product)
• Tweak words to make it easier to read (change a sentence to active tense, split a sentence in two)
• Shift whole responses around to avoid everything jumping back-and-forth chronologically
• Shift a sentence so it sits in an earlier or later response with related sentences.

Common sense (or paranoia?) tells me that any edit would look bad to the original speaker, or to anyone who heard the audio and thought, 'Hang on - why does this not match up?'. I want to make sure I do the right thing. But the transcript in its current state is so long, hard to read, and chronologically jumbled. Help!

posted by sleepcrime to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Best answer: I've done this occasionally at work. I made edits that were along the lines of your first two bullet points (the "tweaks"). For what I was doing chronology wasn't a problem, but I would have also made edits along the lines of your third bullet point ("shift whole responses around") if I needed to make the piece flow better. I would steer clear of the last bullet point.

One thing I did to manage the ethical side of things was to email the edited transcript to the speaker (with Track Changes showing what I had done, and Comments explaining my logic where it wasn't obvious). I asked them to review and let me know by X date if they had issues with any of my edits.
posted by schroedingersgirl at 5:23 AM on August 30, 2015

Best answer: What's the ultimate purpose of these, and how will they be published? You might find this guide from a historical society useful. They recommend correcting grammar and adding missed words as long as it doesn't change the flavor of the person's speech. I wouldn't shift whole sentences, personally.

In grad school I had a job at a law firm preparing documents for court, which sometimes included transcripts that had to be 100% verbatim...be glad you don't have to include every "um" and "uh."
posted by three_red_balloons at 7:13 AM on August 30, 2015

Best answer: Intended audience counts for a lot here. If this is meant for a historical/academic record as a primary record thing, the intonation and flavour of the speech matters, so you want to keep as much as possible, and should only remove the uh and ums, inserting missed words sparingly [like] this.

If it's for a general audience piece, you can edit more. I absolutely would not shift stuff around in a Q&A, but use clear paragraph breaks and punctuation to make the sentences flow better. Edit so tenses and plurals and verbs all agree and the interviewee is understandable, but be very careful about adding or subtracting any meaning/intent to their answers.

If this falls under journalism, you need to check with your editor/supervisor about letting the interviewees see the edited piece before publication. Usually you only let them see a specific quote you need to check or a list of facts, not the entire piece.

If it's for a corporate piece or marketing material, edit like crazy and rewrite so they sound better, just run the final piece by them.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:26 AM on August 30, 2015

Best answer: In my opinion as a former transcriber of interviews the important (and hard) thing is deliver something readable, interesting, and true to the spirit of what the person was saying. Any other considerations are nitpicking. I acknowledge that many would disagree with this, but I would ask them whether only raw transcription that ignores what resulting effect the translation to print might have is really a "true" depiction of the speakers thoughts? If not, then what I'm suggesting is just a matter of degree. All I'm saying is your ethical concern should be for TRUTH not ACCURACY.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:12 AM on August 30, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. All your answers were genuinely helpful to me - thank you for taking the time!
posted by sleepcrime at 3:25 AM on August 31, 2015