When you think about audio transcription services you can often be mistaken for thinking these are outdated. Maybe an old-fashioned image of a secretary taking notes will flash into your mind or of someone hunched over a keyboard typing up pages upon pages of shorthand notes. Well times have changed, and thankfully moved on. Audio transcription services today are very varied and interesting working alongside multiple industries and sectors including the digital world. Even with the rise of applications and computer software entering this market human interaction and dependency is still on the rise, as until software finds a way to replace or even be as accurate as humans in recognising accents, slang or technical specifications the need for human audio transcribers will continue to increase and become ever more diverse and interesting.
For instance, did you realise that audio transcription is used within the criminal justice system as court reporters (or court stenographers as they are sometimes called) have the responsibility of ensuring the transcripts produced by the court’s computer systems are accurate. Court reporters have to read through the transcribed outputs editing any errors. If you have the patience needed to spend long hours in a courtroom and have an interest in the justice system this could well prove an interesting role for you as a transcriber.
Moving away from the justice system audio transcription services are now also in high demand in the ever-expanding world of website creation and management. With more than 180 million active websites on the world wide web, search engines are constantly revamping their rules and codes on how to score the effectiveness of a website for it to rank highly in their listings. Improving search engine rankings can currently be done by hiring the services of an audio transcription specialist. Rankings are improved by transcribing any good audio content on the website (which may be held in videos or short clips) into text. This way the search engine algorithms will use the content, now as text, in their scoring mechanisms when considering the ranking of your site.
Audio transcription services are also used regularly in business, medical and academic settings due to the large word count often included within the audio to be transcribed. It takes around 4-6 hours to transcribe 1hour of spoken text, therefore a professional service must be used to be able to manage both large pieces of text and a wide variety of industry specific terminologies. There are also two different types of transcription which can be utilised and offered by any professional transcription service. Verbatim and Non-verbatim transcription. Verbatim transcription is often used for legal purposes and refers to the technique of transcribing every noise heard, not just the voice. This means the sound of doors closing, physical gestures, and repetition of words will be included and unfinished sentences will not be finished off. However, non-verbatim transcript will allow for the tidying up of unfinished sentences and will eliminate all grammatical errors and non-verbal utterances and omit background noises.
Whatever the reason for either needing audio transcription services or wanting to become an audio transcriber yourself hopefully the above will have provided some interesting facts to broaden your knowledge.