This article outlines best practices and further information for researchers conducting multi market studies. Please refer to specific guides on Live Interviews and Online Qualitative for general advice.

Which languages are supported for transcription?

This section outlines which languages are currently supported for transcription (speech to text).

Live Interviews

We are currently working on extending support for additional languages via out Zoom, Teams and Google Meet integration

For live interviews CoLoop currently supports the following languages with near-human quality (more detail available here)

Online Qual

For online qual CoLoop currently supports the following languages. More niche languages such as Welsh may have variable quality due to the availability of training data (more details here).

When transcribing these files in CoLoop you should click detect language if there are multiple languages present in the online qual upload.

Which languages are supported for translation?

This section outlines which languages are currently supported for translation (Non-English to English). Transcripts do not need to be translated in order to conduct analysis however quotes and transcripts will be shown in the native language.

Live Interviews & Online Qual

For live interviews CoLoop currently supports the following languages for translation:

What if my language is supported for translation but not transcription?

  • Translation within CoLoop can also be applied to txt and docx files.
  • If you are working in a language we support for translation but not transcription e.g. Arabic you can upload 3rd party transcripts in the native language and translate them in CoLoop.
  • Be sure to checkout our formatting guides to ensure your native language transcripts are properly processed (more details here).

Simultaneous Translation

Working with SimTran files in CoLoop can present challenges as they contain only one speaker. In this scenario we recommend using the original language file if it is supported.

SimTran files can be uploaded to CoLoop but please consider the following.

  1. Theme counts may not be accurate particularly if the interview involved more than 2 speakers
  2. CoLoop will not be able to as accurately distinguish moderator and participant statements so you will see moderator highlighted in the evidence panel
  3. These can be effectively used for simple use cases like summaries and finding quotes

For more information please refer to this guide.

Using 3rd party transcripts from focus groups

If you have access to the original audio and it is in a language we support and under 10 speakers total you can also upload, transcribe and translate this directly in CoLoop

In some cases 3rd party transcripts of focus groups may not contain speaker level identification, only moderator and participants.

  • Here we recommend merging together participants into a generic speaker label
  • You can do this by running a find & replace on all instances of respondent
  • And replacing them with something generic like โ€œFocus Group 2 Participantsโ€
  • This approach will come with the drawback that theme counts will no longer be accurate
  • It will also only be possible to summarise responses from the concensus of the whole group

Example

Original Transcript

Moderator
All right, well, let's go ahead and get started. So, my first question, amelia, I'll start with you on this one. Each of you is here because you said that this election, you voted for the very first time. And so I want to hear from each of you. Why did you decide to vote? Why participate in this election? So, Amelia, we'll start with you first.

Respondent
St sure. So, the last election, I was 19, so I was able to vote, but I didn't feel that I was educated enough on who to vote for to make a correct decision, and I didn't want to follow through with that. Now, this election, I'm a little bit older, and I think I have formed enough of an opinion to feel confident in my vote.

Moderator
Great. How about Dylan C. You say you voted for the first time in this election. Tell me a little bit about why you decided to participate this time.

Respondent
Yeah, so last election, I was 17, so I was not able to vote, and now I'm 21, so basically it was my first time being able to, and, yeah, kind of like the same thing Amelia said. I just felt like I was able to form enough of my own opinion to be able to voice it.

Updated Transcript

Moderator
All right, well, let's go ahead and get started. So, my first question, amelia, I'll start with you on this one. Each of you is here because you said that this election, you voted for the very first time. And so I want to hear from each of you. Why did you decide to vote? Why participate in this election? So, Amelia, we'll start with you first.

Focus Group 1 Participants
St sure. So, the last election, I was 19, so I was able to vote, but I didn't feel that I was educated enough on who to vote for to make a correct decision, and I didn't want to follow through with that. Now, this election, I'm a little bit older, and I think I have formed enough of an opinion to feel confident in my vote.

Moderator
Great. How about Dylan C. You say you voted for the first time in this election. Tell me a little bit about why you decided to participate this time.

Focus Group 1 Participants
Yeah, so last election, I was 17, so I was not able to vote, and now I'm 21, so basically it was my first time being able to, and, yeah, kind of like the same thing Amelia said. I just felt like I was able to form enough of my own opinion to be able to voice it.