Take extra care of your health as a transcriber

We all know that on a daily basis, audio transcription can be a very tedious, stress inducing job, one which requires countless hours of working, whether you’re a proofreader/editor or a transcriber.  Unlike other jobs (maybe apart from programming), transcription deals with pretty much only using the keyboard on a PC. With the use of foot pedals, it means that transcribers can now ignore taking breaks to pause/play and just go on like an express train typing away on the keyboard for hours, and many transcribers do so to earn more money during their work hours, which is certainly commendable, but not good for their health in the long term.

Over the years, we have witnessed many transcribers experiencing wrist problems, back pains, ear pains etc. from long hours of work, and these can be avoided by changing just a few things in your daily life.

1. Equipment:  If it’s a company employing transcribers, the employer has to make sure they buy good equipment, such as ergonomic keyboards, good quality/high fidelity headphones, good chairs to make sure none of their employees develop any back problems. If you’re an at-home transcriber/proofreader, it’s an absolute must to invest in a good keyboard and an ergonomic chair, because people working at home can get complacent and may think that they can work while sitting on the couch, which can be a very bad idea in the long-run, as a couch is not where you should be sitting while working.

2.  Take Breaks:  This cannot be stressed enough.  The human body should not be sitting or standing in one position for too long, because it is not built to do so.  Ideally, it’s recommended to take a break from your chair every 30 minutes, to get up, walk around, stretch your arms, wrists, fingers, hamstrings, quads, calf muscles, ankles etc.  Doing this not only relieves stress on a certain body part, but also promotes better blood flow.  Also, the spine should not be curved in the C position for too long, so make sure you have ample cushioning at your lower back.

3. Exercise:  Regular exercises can make sure your body remains healthy, and that way you can avoid the risk of repetitive stress energy.  Light exercises like yoga, cardio etc. are helpful, but avoid strength training exercises or lift heavy weights which put extra stress on the wrists or the back, as you will be using them while working.

4.  Use of painkillers, ointments etc:  So you’re already dealing with a repetitive stress injury, now what?  Your wrists have been hurting for a long time and nothing helps?  Your lower back hurts, but you don’t know what to do?  Seeing a doctor and getting some medication always helps, obviously.  Physiotherapists can help you with some pretty useful stretches, and these are always essential to do in between breaks.  In our opinion, stay away from strong painkiller drugs like paracetamol, ibuprofen, tramadol etc.  Instead use a strong painkiller ointment to massage the affected area, take hot baths with therapeutic bath salts, use crepe bandages to wrap the strained muscle or the affected area.  We say this because overuse of painkiller drugs can create further complications with one’s health.

So, in summary, our advice would be to invest in equipment and furniture that helps you, take your breaks, use your painkillers, workout regularly, take your vitamins and say your prayers. (Well, maybe not the last part)

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What attributes help with becoming successful at audio transcription?

To become a good transcriber, you don’t require any degree or diploma. You don’t even have to be certified by any certification body, online or physical. There are no special skills that you have to acquire after years of studying, because the process of transcribing an audio file is pretty simple. You just listen to an audio file and type what you hear. The job of the proofreader then is to check and edit what you typed. Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? Or does it? In this post we’ll look at the things you can do to improve your skills as a transcriber and become better at a job which you would be more than likely be pursuing as your career, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article.

1. More exposure to English:  This is an obvious one. People who transition from working at call centers, BPOs etc. have a much easier time with transcription, simply because in their previous job they have spent hours, days, weeks talking and resolving issues of people from different parts of the world, mostly Americans, Canadians, Australians and Britishers (I mentioned these countries because they’re the ones usually employing offshore call centers). It also depends on the culture or where you grew up, like if you had a lot of exposure to English when growing up, for example, English/Hollywood movies, TV series, sitcoms, English music, English discussion forums, English schools etc. All of that helps in the overall understanding and fluency with the language, and is very helpful when dealing with tough accents or fast speakers or tackling a difficult topic.

2. Better feedback for beginners:  As a transcriber, you really don’t have much control in this area. This depends on the proofreaders or mentors at your workplace and how well they can support you and give constructive feedback. As far as formatting, grammar and punctuations go, feedback is extremely crucial, because if the transcriber doesn’t get good feedback, that could make or break their career as a successful transcriber.

3. Being handy with search engines:  Everybody knows how to Google something they need to know about or read about it extensively on Wikipedia, but there are lots of tips and tricks which can save crucial time and make the difference between an okay transcriber and a good one. Lots of times transcribers just take, what they think they heard, as granted, without searching, and this can lead to some really silly mistakes, which with a little more attention could have been avoided. Learning Google shortcuts and tips and tricks is a great way to improve your transcription skills.

4. Typing Speed:  This is another very obvious one. A job that requires 99% typing of course would require you to be fast. There are other transcription aids such as foot pedals etc., and coupled with that if you are adept at 10-finger typing at around or more than 60 WPM, you can make good money with very little effort.

5. Use common sense:  I have told this to a lot of transcribers in my time working as a proofreader, please use common sense. There’s no point in just typing like a robot without trying to make sense of what you’re typing. Transcription is not such an easy job where you just put the audio on and start typing. Before you begin or while you’re transcribing, you need to be aware of the subject topic, a little bit about the speaker if possible, what company, country, city they belong to, etc. All this hardly takes a few minutes, but can make a huge difference in the accuracy and quality of a transcript.

Hopefully these pointers help new transcribers just entering the business hoping to make a decent living for themselves. We’ll be adding more to this topic in the future. Until then, stay frosty.

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Helping people reach your content easily with better accessibility

We have delved into this topic several times over the course of us writing helpful articles on this blog. We received a lot of questions through our FAQ channel regarding accessibility, ease of use etc. regarding audio transcription. Why is transcription important? Well, a lot of clients understand the importance of this question, and that’s why get their audio files transcribed.  Let’s get into the nitty-gritties of this step-by-step.

Reaching a wider audience has always been the goal of every company, whether big or small. You want your product known far and wide. This has been the case ever since business was invented. Owner of a business as small as a grocery store would ask its customers to spread the word to get more business. Why should it be different for online businesses? By offering your users the option of reading or downloading a transcript, you’re opening up a whole new dimension, a dimension where deaf and cognitively challenged people can read what you had to say.

Another new dimension is where people in remote places around the world don’t have to wait for your audio interview, podcast or radio show to stream or buffer. They can simply open up the transcript in HTML form or just download the document straight from the website and read it at their own convenience. Of course, if you want to add your own personal touch, you can format the transcripts differently, and that gets the job done.

Audio transcription has shown to be extremely useful in whichever category you can possibly think of, whether it be business, media (TV or radio), academics, church, medical, health and lifestyle etc. etc. Not only does it help reach a wider audience, but that amount of text can only make Google and other search engines happy and help boost the website rankings as well. It’s a win-win situation on all fronts! Of course you can always use a voice-to-text software, if you think it’s helpful, but we’ll see in our next post what challenges it may or may not present. Until then, hopefully this was helpful!

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So, finally we’re back in the New Year after finishing off a TON of work before, during and after the holidays.  All I can say is a big, relieved “Phew!”  I believe this past year ScriptoSphere has taken a big leap in terms of clients, transcriber and proofreader quality, and overall accuracy and quality, something which we have always been chasing no matter how good our clients say we are.  It hasn’t been easy streamlining everything and putting a working formula in place, but we’re glad we’ve entered the next dimension.

The last three months of the year were painful and lovely at the same time.  It seemed like we would have an almost unstoppable barrage of new and existing clients, ALL wanting their work done at the same time.  But as we have always done in the past, the audio transcription team at ScriptoSphere came through with flying colors, albeit a few hiccups here and there.

Academic transcription and podcast transcription took the center stage during the last part of 2011, so much so that almost 80% of the work was from academic clients, with our usual and regular podcast and radio show clients making up the rest of it.  The topics we tackled also were really varied, where it went from human suffering, trauma to simple math and physics discussions to a whole plethora of health and lifestyle radio shows.  People say audio transcription is a tedious process, but I’d say we’re blessed to be working and learning so much at the same time.  Which other job lets you do this?

All I can say is that we are very grateful and thankful to all our clients who considered and then ultimately chose us for their work.  Hopefully our work has been satisfactory for all of them.  So far we have heard only good things, and here’s hoping that in the New Year, it will continue to be so.  We wish you a very Happy New Year from everybody at the ScriptoSphere team!

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Advantages and disadvantages of doing business with an online audio transcription company

A lot can be achieved on the internet today.  People can get almost anything done online, even as far as kids outsourcing their homework.  There are lots of workplace markets online now where one can bid for their work to be done cheaply.  Being an online audio transcription company, we believe it is our duty to let you, our clients and friends, know about the pros and cons of transcription services online.  So, here it goes:

PROS:

• You can get a difficult, time consuming and tedious job like audio transcription done fairly cheap if you know what to search for.
• You can find offshore companies providing same accuracy and quality as onshore companies at a much lesser price and much less hassle.
• Websites with everything streamlined, so you just upload your file and forget about it, and get a fully formatted transcript in return.

CONS:

• Lots of companies online claiming to be onshore and having “only American transcribers”, but really scamming clients, and in reality outsourcing almost all of their transcription work offshore.
• Charging unbelievably high prices for clear quality, perfectly audible audio files, sometimes even as high as $3 per minute of audio, which in our opinion is hugely unfair.
• Messy websites with nothing streamlined, making uploading files and getting other important information really difficult for the clients, also asking clients to enter their personal data everywhere.
• Many companies have what they call “budget transcription”, and if the client chooses that option, in many cases they get unfinished, non-proofread transcripts with low accuracy and quality, because they’re paying lesser.

So, our advice to potential clients is, always spend a bit more time on your searches.  It doesn’t hurt to read actual client testimonials to gauge how good a transcription service is either.  Make an informed decision, so that you get your buck’s worth.

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