As you’ve learned earlier in the introduction, linguists, whose job is to document languages, primarily work with audios and recordings. However, their work doesn’t stop there. Once they’ve made the recordings, they have to annotate the information in a format that is accessible to a wider audience. This process includes creating written records. But to do that, linguists have to go through three main steps: transcription, translation and grammatical annotation.

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Here, we’ll focus on transcription, which can be defined as any symbolic representation that captures the meaningful aspects of recorded spoken language events. The goal is to represent everything as accurately as possible, including pauses, repetitions and even those moments when the speaker starts and stops. 

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The fastest way to do a transcription is to stay close to the spoken words. However, the people of this field, whose goal is to analyse the language, follow a more specific method. This allows them to distinguish between the fine characteristics of the spoken language. 

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One particular method we’ll explore is called phonetic transcription. This type of transcription is important because it helps capture the unique sounds and even tones of a language. In essence, it allows linguists to represent how words are pronounced.

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The most widely employed system for phonetic transcription is the International Phonetic Association (IPA) alphabet, which finds its basics in the Roman alphabet. Its aim is to provide a unique symbol for each distinct sound in a language and can even show things like nasalisation of vowels, the length of sounds, and word stresses.