NOTE: All information provided in this document is confidential.

Any
publication, provision, or dissemination of this content is strictly
prohibited. Do not share or post the contents on the internet.

Forester English (Canada) Annotation

Guidelines

General guidelines
This task requires that you listen to audio files and classify them using the radio button
labels below. You do not need to type out what the speaker says. This is done later.

Please read the guidelines below carefully, and if anything is unclear, contact your
project manager.

Using labels
The aim of this task is to identify files that have enough intelligible English speech from
a native Canadian speaker in them to be worthwhile transcribing.

We want to target audio from Canadian accented English speakers only. We want to
minimise the amount of speech that is not Canadian accented English to be transcribed,
so files that also contain a noticeable amount of other accents or other languages
should be labelled as foreign or other-english.

If the file can be transcribed, listen to it again to check if it contains personal information
(see UII below), if not, add the transcription label and move on.

Make sure to listen to all of the speech in case there is UII that needs to be marked.

Please use headphones when working on this task. This will ensure you can hear the
audio clearly. Set your volume to a comfortable level (80%) so that it is not so loud that
your ears hurt, but also not so quiet that you might not hear important sounds and
speech.
NOTE: All information provided in this document is confidential. Any
publication, provision, or dissemination of this content is strictly
prohibited. Do not share or post the contents on the internet.

Label list
Label Reason
other-english
The audio contains more than 10% of English speech
that is NOT in Canadian accented English.

For example, use the label other-english if in some

(more than 10%) of the audio the speaker has an
other English Australian or an American accent.

other-english and foreign should be prioritised over all

other labels.
If you hesitate between other-english and foreign,
choose whichever is more dominant.

Cannot Understand Audio – Foreign Language

At least 10% of the audio contains speech in a

language other than English.
For example, if one minute is in Canadian English and
one minute is in Spanish, select foreign.
foreign
If the speaker uses a few foreign words regularly
throughout the file, it is okay to transcribe.

other-english and foreign should be prioritised over all

other labels.

Transcription
The majority of the audio contains Canadian accented
transcription English speech that can be transcribed. This includes
people speaking, and also words coming from the
television or radio.
NOTE: All information provided in this document is confidential. Any
publication, provision, or dissemination of this content is strictly
prohibited. Do not share or post the contents on the internet.

⚠️ If more than 10% of the file contains a foreign

language or another English accent, please select
foreign or other-english (see previous sections).

If the speaker uses a few foreign words regularly

throughout the file, it is okay to transcribe.

Use the transcription label if the transcribable speech

(Canadian English) and non-speech duration is
approximately the same and there is no more than 10%
foreign or other English speech.

Examples:
● 50% silent + 50% Canadian English =
Transcription.
● 50% silent + 40% Canadian English + 10%
Australian English = other-english

⚠️Please use this even if the speech is in a noisy

environment but you can still understand most of it
clearly.

⚠️Note that if most of the speech is overlapping, even if

you can hear what is said, do not use the transcription
label. Overlapping speech cannot be transcribed.
Please use the 'noisy' label instead.
NOTE: All information provided in this document is confidential. Any
publication, provision, or dissemination of this content is strictly
prohibited. Do not share or post the contents on the internet.

UII (User-Identifiable Information)

For privacy, we cannot transcribe files that contain
user-identifiable information (UII). UII includes things
like full names, usernames, gamertags, street
addresses, telephone numbers, credit card numbers,
social security numbers, etc. If there is UII anywhere in
the audio, select this label.

There are exceptions. You do not need to mark UII if:

▪ It is a news broadcast, TV show, TV or Radio

Program

▪ It is clearly a commercial promotion (e.g. an

uii advertisement) with no expectation of privacy

▪ The full name is of a well-known public figure

(please do more research, by googling the
name, if you’re not sure whether or not the full
name is a well-known public figure).

▪ It is not a full name (you hear either the first

name or the surname)

/!\ Please use caution, full names mentioned in

raffles/lucky draws should always be marked as UII.

If you’re unsure, it’s best to use UII.

No Human Sounds – Does not contain any human

sounds (e.g. speaking, singing, crying, laughing)
The majority of the audio contains only sounds from
no human inanimate objects or animals (e.g., cars honking, dogs
barking) or music without lyrics. It does not contain
human sounds like speaking, singing, crying, or
laughing.
NOTE: All information provided in this document is confidential. Any
publication, provision, or dissemination of this content is strictly
prohibited. Do not share or post the contents on the internet.

Singing
The majority of the audio contains only human singing.

The definition of singing for the purpose of this project

is: making musical and/or rhythmic sounds with your
voice.

The following can also be considered singing:

● Recital of poetry
● Rapping
● Words pronounced in a rhythmic and/or musical
manner.
singing Examples: chanting, ritualistic holy sermons.

Note that these categories are considered speech (not

singing) if they are not pronounced in the manner
described above.

Background music with lyrics is considered to be

singing. Use the singing label even if the song is not in
Canadian English.

If you hesitate between singing and transcription,

choose transcription.
No Speech – Does not contain someone speaking
or singing
The majority of the audio contains human sounds like
crying or laughing but does not contain any form of
human human speech (words) like speaking or singing. Note
that if the audio clip contains speech but it is only in a
small portion of the audio, the human label should still
apply. Use the label if the majority of the audio contains
distant background speech only.
NOTE: All information provided in this document is confidential. Any
publication, provision, or dissemination of this content is strictly
prohibited. Do not share or post the contents on the internet.

Corrupted
The majority of the audio has static or is machine
corrupted augmented/contorted in a way that does not sound like
a human voice.

Not Understandable – Noisy

The majority of the audio is not transcribable because
there is loud noise drowning out any speech. Noise
may include cross-talk of several speakers, shouting,
noisy cheering, too much background noise, etc.
Only use this label if the speech cannot be understood
because of the noise. (Keep your headphones at a
comfortable volume.)

Not Understandable – Accent

The majority of the audio contains English speech with
a strong accent or dialect that makes the speech
accent unintelligible. If the audio clip is accented but still
intelligible, it should be transcribed.
Use this label for speech that would not be intelligible to
an average speaker of Canadian English.

Explicit
Use this label if the audio contains explicit/graphic
content such as pornography, extreme violence, or hate
speech. Note that a recording containing bad language
alone (i.e. without violence/harassment/hate speech)
should not be considered as containing explicit content.

explicit If you consider an audio file explicit, select the explicit

label first then select the category that best fits the
audio from the ‘explicit reason’ dropdown list:

1. sexually explicit
2. violence
3. harassment/threats
NOTE: All information provided in this document is confidential. Any
publication, provision, or dissemination of this content is strictly
prohibited. Do not share or post the contents on the internet.

4. suicide or self-injury
5. hate speech
6. terrorism
7. blasphemy
8. other

Extra notes:

● Sexually explicit files are files that contain

pornography or very crude description or
discussion of the sexual act. Sexual innuendo or
discussion of sexuality is not considered explicit.

● Hate speech refers to public speech that

expresses hate or encourages violence towards
an individual or a group based on race, religion,
gender, or sexual orientation.
● Blasphemy may not be considered
explicit/offensive in some cultures, so make your
best judgement taking into account the context
you are in.

/!\ Please use caution, explicit files are uncommon

and this label should apply only to extreme cases.