Transcription is another term for notation, script, or transcript. It is "a method of writing down speech sounds in a systematic and consistent way" (Crystal, 1992, p. 393). A distinction is made between two types of transcription (Richards, Platt & Platt, 1992, pp 249-50), viz. phonemic transcription, which transcribes only the phonemes of a language, i.e. its distinctive sounds, without showing the finer points of pronunciation, and phonetic transcription, which uses phonetic symbols for various sounds, and shows in detail how particular sounds are pronounced, i.e. pronunciation's finer points. Phonetic transcriptions are placed between square brackets; phonemic, between slant lines: in this manner, sounds and phonemes are differentiated clearly (Ducrot & Todorov, 1979, p. 172).
In phonetic transcription sounds are symbolized on the basis of their articulatory/auditory identity, regardless of their function in a language, reason for which they are sometimes called impressionistic transcriptions. In phonemic transcription, the only units to be symbolized are those which have a linguistic function, i.e. the phonemes. An allophonic transcription adds functional phonetic details. Phonetic transcriptions which are relatively detailed are called narrow transcriptions; those less detailed, broad transcriptions. "It is also important to remember that there are several possible ways of transcribing sounds phonetically, depending on the analyst's views as to what the salient contrasting features are" (Crystal, 1991, p. 357).
Practical linguists start the process of phonemic analysis from non-phonemic transcriptions, although their concern is not with symbols per se, but with the classes of sounds behind the symbols. They start with a raw impressionistic interpretation of sounds and gradually discern interrelationships between the sounds, until they can make general statements about the sound system of a particular language. They thus des...