Let's say I transcribe the pronunciation of "relatively" in General American. Do I have to type [ˈɹɛɫɨɾɪvɫi] or can I omit some details (because perhaps I don't know all of them) and type for example [ˈɹɛlɨɾɪvli] or [ˈɹɛɫɨtɪvɫi]?
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2 Answers
It's up to you!
The general assumption when you use square brackets is that you're providing a phonetic transcription rather than a phonemic one, and usually a narrow phonetic transcription rather than a broad one.
But, broad versus narrow is a spectrum. At the one end are the basic IPA characters; in the middle are various diacritics; and at the other end is a full spectrogram with formant measurements. And all the different parts of this spectrum are useful for different purposes.
In many contexts, it'll be perfectly fine to say that /a/ is realized as [æ] in a certain environment, without getting into the weeds on whether that [æ] is identical to the cardinal vowel or not. It conveys the information the writer wants to convey; that's the purpose of any transcription, in the end.
No. Square brackets mean the enclosed transcription is phonetic (as opposed to phonemic), and doesn't mean it has to be narrow.
This is explicitly illustrated in the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association (pp. 28–30) with the example of "Check the lens well."
If the relevant phonological system is known, a transcription can be devised which includes any number of additional symbols to indicate the phonetic realizations of the phonemes, i.e. their allophones. [...] In the knowledge that a possible phonemic analysis of check the lens well is /tʃɛkðəlɛnzwɛl/, one allophonic or systematic narrow transcription would, perhaps surprisingly, be [tʃe̞ʔ͡kð̞əlɛ̃nzwæ̠ɫ], that is, one which is identical to the impressionistic transcription [...] incorporating all the phonetic detail which can be heard. [...] Alternatively, it is possible (and customary) to be selective about the information which is explicitly incorporated into the allophonic transcription. The choice might be made, for instance, to leave out the information about vowel height [...] and about vowel nasalization (which is very general before a following nasal), giving a transcription which focuses on consonant realization: [tʃɛʔ͡kðəlɛnzwɛɫ]. Minimally, if the focus of interest were glottalization of plosives, the allophonic transcription could be [tʃɛʔ͡kðəlɛnzwɛl], or if the focus were the 'dark' lateral, [tʃɛkðəlɛnzwɛɫ]. [...] Narrowness is regarded as a continuum, so that [tʃɛkðəlɛnzwɛɫ] might be regarded as a slightly narrow (or 'narrowed') transcription, and [tʃe̞ʔ͡kð̞əlɛ̃nzwæ̠ɫ] as very narrow.
