German Latter-Day Saints in World War II
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Text Editors

Staff member: Mary Wade

Recorded interviews of eyewitnesses are transcribed for more efficient study and citation. As is true with all speakers, daily conversation tends to contain elements that are not impressive on paper, such as repetitions, hesitations, nonsense syllables (“uh”), and idiomatic phrases (“well, you know”). Text editors are charged with the task of cleaning up the interview text to make it more coherent. Of course, no content is added or deleted.

Example:
Text on tape: “Our meeting rooms were in the Hindenburgstrasse, I think no. 13, or was it 15? How could I forget that? Yes, it was 13!”

Edited text: “Our meeting rooms were in the Hindenburgstrasse no. 13.”

Finished texts are sent to the interviewee, who is then invited to study it for accuracy (especially in our spelling of German names). Interviewees send the corrections to us, and a final editing is done. The text is then ready to be summarized or quoted and the interviewee is invited to share it with relatives.

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Revised: 15 December 2008 20:16:20.