Transcription Time

When Naomi first took on the task of transcribing Lyon’s journal, she had nothing to go off of besides the photocopied pages of the journal she was provided. She had to carefully go through and rewrite everything that Lyon had written with his dipped ink pen, back in 1826. Transcribing is something that requires lots of time and skill. This diary was the second one in Naomi’s life that she had ever transcribed. She said that she did her best to transcribe it word for word, and tried her best to make certain sentences were clear.  Many, however, were hard for her to understand or interpret.

Without seeing the original diary and just reading the transcribed one, there are lots of things that are up to the reader to interpret and wonder about. Throughout the diary, which begins in 1826, there is a pretty consistent pattern. Each diary entry begins with a date, followed by details of Lyon's activities on that date. In the first half of the diary, Lyon started off each entry with, “Rose at…” and then continued to write about the events that followed. About half-way through the diary, which ends in 1839, Lyon stops recording when he woke up. His sentences start to vary, and some are not even complete. Others, however, are very complete, and offer rich details about his trials and tribulations in London, Barbados, and Jamaica. In one passage Lyon includes a line of text under the word “Liverpool” that reads, “and arranged with Josephs to become my correspondent” (Transcription, 39). To the reader this is confusing—-why would Lyon jump from writing such clear, detailed sentences to writing abrupt, incomplete ones? The reader may wonder if this was exactly how the text looked in the original diary or if was something that was difficult for the transcriber to interpret, and what is written in the transcription is the best that she can make out. Although, in this specific instance, Naomi noted that she did not add or subtract any words while transcribing the diary (Cream, Naomi, personal communication, November 21, 2016).