4.5 Using ELAN

As you saw in the lesson on SayMore, transcription and translation can be represented in .eaf files. In this lesson, you learn how to create .eaf annotation directly in ELAN.  First, let's go over the steps on how  to create a new project ELAN project. 

Creating an ELAN project

The steps to create an ELAN project are as follows:

  1. Open ELAN.  In the File Drop down menu, click "New".
  2. Find the video file and audio file pair and open both in ELAN
  3. In the Options drop down menu select "Segmentation Mode"
  4. Use the Enter key to mark the beginning and end of chunks of speech.  These will be phrases or clauses.

Setting up Tiers

In this section, we will learn how to set up tiers and add further levels of annotation.  This might include the meaning of each word, the meaning of each morpheme, gesture, speaker, or other fields you might need for analysis. 

  1. Once ELAN is open, open the ELAN file you created in ELAN 1 or create a new ELAN project.
  2. Set up tiers.  This is a two-step process.  Step 1 is to define types of tiers.  Step 2 is to then add those tiers.
  3. Define types of tiers.  Here we will define three tiers.  One for transcription, one for breaking up the transcription by word, one for translation of the words, and one for translation of the clause.  From the  "Type" pull down menu, select  "Add new tier type".  Here are the values for the tiers
Type Name Stereotype Time Aligned
Transcription - yes
Words Symbolic Subdivision yes
Word Gloss Symbolic Association no
Clause Gloss Symbolic Association no

      4. Add tiers.  From the "Tier" pull down menu, select, "Add Tier".  When the dialog box open you will select the tiers under Tier Name.  Here are the values you should set here.

Tier Name Parent Tier Tier Type
Transcription - Transcription
Words Transcription Words
Word Gloss Words Word Gloss
Clause Gloss Transcription Clause Clause

Adding Transcriptions and Additional Annotation

  1. Now that we have defined our tiers and added them to the project, they will appear to the left under the signal. 
  2. Add transcription:  Under the "Options" menu, go to the "Annotation Mode".  Now, in the transcription tier, click under  any segment chunk.  Here you can type in the transcription.
  3. Add Word:  From the "Tier" drop down menu, select Tokenize tier.  In the dialog box  for Tokenize tier, select Transcription for the Source Tier and select Word for Destination Tier.  This will break the words in transcription into individual units using white space as the beginning and end of a "word".
  4. Now under each word so delineated, you can click in the "Word Gloss" tier and add the gloss of the word.
  5. In the Clause Gloss field, you can add the translation.