Text techniques in OoT

There's a horrifying amount of text in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and a large percentage of it cannot be skipped. Text techniques are techniques used to minimise the amount of text that has to be seen in a speedrun.

Names

Depending on the speech you're sitting through, the name you enter (it's supposed to be Link, but you can put up to eight characters of your choice) will either display in a fixed time (all flashing up at once) or come up one letter at a time. It's easiest to see when this happens by entering your name as "WWWWWWWW". That means you can save time by picking a shorter name. I would estimate this saves you possibly one second per character over the ENTIRE game, so putting your name as "." will save you maybe seven seconds in total. Most speedrunners don't bother to take advantage of this, viewing the pros of having your real name or screen name visible on the screen as outweighing the con of a tiny amount of lost time.

Language choice

I believe it's possible to select English, French or German as your language when playing the game. Since most of the text in the game comes up character by character, as explained above, it saves time to pick a language where the words are shorter. I believe English is the best choice for this, but that's not based on any empirical tests. Certainly German would come in last in this respect. Equally obvious is that you should be either very familiar with the language you're using, or failing that, very familiar with the game, so you know what options to pick at each prompt.

Best practices for speech and prompts

There are long speeches where you'll be tapping A to cycle through as fast as possible. Don't tap A, tap B, because some parts of speeches can be skipped in their entirety by this method. But STOP tapping B when a prompt begins to display itself, or you may end up inadvertently choosing the wrong option. Sometimes you end up sitting through an awful amount of extra text if you do this. Remember which option to select at each prompt!

Navi and other people to avoid talking to

ALWAYS ignore Navi. She goes away when you change areas in any case. If you're moving fast enough you hardly notice she's there anyway. Also do not talk to freed Gorons in the Fire Temple.

Outright speech skips

While many portions of dialogue are necessary to advance the quest, many, such as Navi's explanations of the basic controls, early on in the game, are lengthy, boring AND useless. They are for the most part triggered by walking across boundaries into specific areas of ground. Creative means can be used, however, to cross these boundaries via e.g. Hookshot or backflipping, avoiding the trigger and the lengthy speech.

The exact method used in each case varies, and I'm no expert, so I'll just link you to this lengthy SDA thread where the discussion is currently ongoing.

Dodongo's Cavern

In Dodongo's Cavern, in the room with the narrow corridors and blades, Navi gives a lecture on Z-targeting to look around corners. It is very difficult, but allegedly possible, to jump into the gap on the left and backflip your way to the far side to skip it.