Text Mining

Voyant Tools

To comprehend complex writing demands a prolonged amount of time, mainly to analyze the text. As a student myself, I have had to learn the art of skimming long chapters in short amounts of time. However, as we emerge in this high-tech era, examining extensive passages through utilizing the traditional method will be a thing of the past. As we now live in an age where digital technology offers new and convenient ways of examining and analyzing text. For example, Voyant Tools is an application for conducting textual analysis. Through its services, it provides readers with a deeper understanding of the text they wish to analyze.  By taking advantage of free services similar to that of the one’s Voyant Tools offers, one can reduce the amount of time it takes to comprehend a text. In doing so, one can productively utilize that extra time to evaluate other components of the text. Nevertheless, one’s inability to understand how to use such applications may be frustrating. For this reason, in particular, I wrote this blog in an attempt to alleviate any misunderstandings and help readers extract the information they need from their text.

Process

Using the application Voyant Tools I decided to analyze two famous short-stories by prestigious Latin-American authors, “The Judge’s Wife” by Isabel Allende and “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. First, I used Google Chrome to search for the English versions of the stories. Then, after downloading the English translated versions, I uploaded the Word documents into Voyant Tools. The application instantly provided me with valuable, summarized data from the text. However, it was my job to collect and analyze the information correctly. From my experience, I have found that having prior knowledge of the content of the reading will aid in the understanding of the material. However, not having background knowledge does not prevent one from being able to analyze the stories properly. With my example, I knew what the content of the stories in Spanish were. However, I did not know what to expect the content of the stories in English to be. After using the application, I found the English translations to be quite different. For example, in the English version, the word “chicken” was used a lot, whereas, in the original text, the word for “chicken,” “pollo,” is not used at all.  In fact, the closest word in the Spanish version to the word chicken is “gallinero,” which in English would be “hen house.” 

Lastly, if one were to take a close look at the title of the stories, one can find clues about the narrative. For instance, in the story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” we find the word angel written several times. Thus, allowing one to conclude that there might be an angelic being portrayed metaphorically in the story. Additionally, the app is handy in identifying the names that stick out the most. Also, by clicking on the option links, you can see the words that are related to the text, and it also gives you a better insight into the story. All in all, for both of the stories, Voyant Tools was useful in clarifying terms, identifying main characters, and providing a deeper understanding of the context of the story.