What are some of the skills that can help you become a better transcriber?

One of the most time consuming and trouble-making exercise for a transcriber is to search. Yep, I’m talking about using the internet to search for important stuff, or how it has come to be known these days, to “Google it”. Even if on a first glance you would be tempted to say “What does this have to do with anything?”, I’ll make this clearer for our clients.

You see, usually when we have to transcribe business meetings, earnings results calls and other conference recordings or interview audio files, nobody thinks about making a list with all the proper nouns i.e. names of executives, speakers, participants, analysts, company names, branches, subsidiaries, cities etc. referred to by speakers. Thus, it becomes the transcriber’s task not only to deliver an accurate transcript, but also to correctly spell the proper nouns so as to avoid confusion or even ridiculousness at the time the client needs to makes use of the transcript.

Let’s say you are the transcriber and at a point you hear a name, which you know is a proper and not a common noun, because of the way the speaker talks about it. For example, he could say “The Q1 production in our Quintata Florita gas field has a 10% increase compared to last year’s Q1.”  Now, this is an odd name and you wouldn’t, for the life of you, have any idea what that is.  This becomes doubly problematic if the audio is bad, and it’s something that transcription service companies go through on a daily basis.

This is where the skills of the transcriber in using search engines come into effect.  A clever transcriber or a proofreader would probably already have all the important websites and search engines open, or might even have the presentation PDF or slides ready to look for that name. Only after lots of trial and error can the right information be obtained. So, as before, this is to illustrate that the field of audio transcription requires much more skill than just to listen and type.

Audio Transcription Prices

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As a business company, you have to build the trust of your customers just like any other business enterprise.  Confidence building with clients is a very important factor, and also for them to see your service is reliable and that they can trust you with their personal or professional files, that often involves confidential data (PhD or some university project). You’d be surprised to find out that a confidentiality agreement is required not only in academic transcription and legal transcription, but many other fields.  Clients also need the assurance of quality and accuracy, but that can only be judged after they review the transcripts.

Now, ScriptoSphere has been delivering transcription services for many years, so I believe we would be qualified to underline and point out or even identify as a completely new feature, the key fields to assess an individual transcriber’s skills OR the services of an entire audio transcription company.

Ethical Code:

• Degree of professionalism: Not much to say here, it has to be proven with references or samples and trials.
• Confidentiality: Ask for a confidentiality agreement if you need one.  Any online transcription service should be gladly willing to sign it
• The human touch:  When contacting the transcription service through email or on the phone, the customer service has to be top-notch.  Not only do they have to be nice with you, that is a prerequisite, but more importantly they should be able to answer any and all questions you might have.

Experience:

• To gauge how experienced a company is, one should look at their testimonials page.  Of course, not all clients provide a testimonial.  The more experience a transcription service has, the more accurate and fast the transcription process would be.
• Database of specific terms – obviously in the fields in which they are qualified. This again can be ascertained with the accuracy and quality of the transcripts.
• Proofreading:  This is one of the most important aspects of audio transcription.  Once a file is transcribed, it’s proofread at least once, if not twice (in case of tough files).  This helps clean up the file a great deal and correct it grammatically, and also the resulting transcript is better since it went through two sets of ears.

It will be safe to assume that ScriptoSphere rates highly in the all the above mentioned key features, and you can safely choose us for the transcription of your audio files, you will always get the best quality at the lowest price, in the shortest time.

Audio transcription pricing

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Email us for a quote or further details: service@scriptosphere.com

Not into using search engines?  If you’re active on social networks, and you want to get in touch with ScriptoSphere, just add us or follow us on the following networks:

Facebook: <– Click on that icon to land on our Facebook page.  Either add us as a friend or just click on the “Like” button.

MySpace: <— Click on the icon to land on our MySpace page.  Send us a friend request and we’ll be more than happy to add you.

Twitter: <– Click on the icon to open our Twitter page and join our growing list of followers to get all the news and updates.

We attempt to answer some more frequently asked questions by clients:

ScriptoSphere gets some very common questions on Audio Transcription frequently, and we’ll attempt to answer those questions on our blog here in this FAQ series.  Some of the new questions are listed below:

Q:  I am confused about your rates.  I have a 60 minute file ready to be transcribed, but I don’t know how much would it cost.  Please give a quote.  Thanks.

A: Our rates are listed on our homepage here: http://www.scriptosphere.com and for the RUSH rates, you can visit our Policy page here: http://www.scriptosphere.com/policy.htm.  Now, as you can see, the rates depend on the quality of your audio file.  So, for example, if your recorded audio has two speakers, and the audio quality is clean and clear where both of them are easy to understand, it will fall under our Type I category, which is $0.90 per minute of audio.  So, for a 60 minute audio file, the transcript will cost you 60 x $0.90 = $54.  This is of course the rate for a normal turnaround time of between 2-3 business days.  If you want the transcript sooner, the rate goes up, as explained on our Policy page.

Q: What are your payment options and any policies that you might have?

A: You can pay us either via PayPal or via Xoom.  The first option is easier for some clients as they already do a lot of online shopping via PayPal.  Xoom is an alternative for sending money directly to our bank account, and this option is used for large orders of transcription, where the total invoice amount exceeds $300 or $400.

Our policy for new clients can be of upfront payment, because we have no way of knowing whether the client will remain honest and pay up after they get their transcripts.  We would like to think that it’s an ideal, honest world out there, but that’s not the case, and audio transcription is a really difficult job that deserves payment, just like you would pay any other service.

Q: I can’t figure out how to upload my file on your website for transcription.  Can you please help?

A: The process of uploading your files on the ScriptoSphere website is really easy.  You’ll see the upload button at the top on our website, and also the big banner that says “Upload your audio files here” at the bottom.  If there is a problem with either of those two, simply click this link: http://www.scriptosphere.com/upload.htm.

Once you open that page, be patient because the upload box can take a little time to load.  Once the upload box has loaded, simply enter your email address, and details about the file and yourself, then proceed to the next step.  Next, simply click on the “Browse” button and locate the file on your computer hard drive.  You can choose up to 5 files to upload.  Now that you have chosen to upload your files, simply click on the “SendThisFile” button, and the file will reach us.  We’ll contact you within 24 hours with the quote and other information.

Hopefully the above questions were helpful for you, our beloved clients.  Do not hesitate to email us for any further questions that you might have, on transcription@scriptosphere.com.

Audio transcription pricing

Upload your audio files for transcription

Email us for a quote or further details: service@scriptosphere.com

How is audio transcription utilized in everyday life?

I guess all of us at some point in our busy daily life spend a few minutes to read an interview of our favorite actor/actress, sportsperson, politician, media celebrity, book author and what not.  Of course, none of those people have the time to sit and narrate their interview to an on-the-spot transcriber who types it all into a print-ready document.  Of course not.

What the reporters and journalists do is record their interview and then get the interview transcribed by professional transcription service providers, which turn voice to text making the interview print-ready to be published in newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites.

The whole process happens pretty fast too.  In today’s world, where technology has made so many things so much easier, audio transcription has gone pretty much on the same path.  With the advent of SmartPhones all over the world, people can now just record the interview on their phone, and then using the phone itself, upload the recorded audio to the transcription company‘s website, and receive the transcript back within a mere hours, depending on the file duration and quality.

This wonderful streamlining of the transcription process has been made possible by the thousands of online audio transcription services which have opened shop in recent years.  Hopefully this post was able to shed light on the importance of audio transcription in every day life.

Audio Transcription Pricing

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How has the digital technology helped the field of audio transcription?

What we are getting at in this post is that today’s booming online transcription service industry has been helped in a big way because of technology and the advent of digital sound formats like MP3, WAV, WMA, RA, DSS, M4A etc.  Earlier, let’s say about 15 or 20 years ago, there was no way that online transcription companies would have existed, well because first of all the internet was not as widespread as today, and secondly there were no digital file formats available at all.

The process of converting voice to text became oh so convenient only because of the availability of internet in the 21st century, which meant that it was accessible to everyone at a nominal cost, and as the computers became cheaper, it made its way into almost every home.  Today, almost everyone can afford an internet connection, and this has made the process of audio transcription really that easy.

Before all of this however, transcription services used to operate out of yellow pages, radio and print advertisements etc.  And since there were no digital sound files available, that meant that transcription had to be done via tape cassettes, VHS or audio CDs, which meant using different players for each of them.  And of course, all of this made the whole process extremely tedious, painstaking, expensive and time consuming.

Today, the digital audio files that we’re talking about, that everyone is familiar with, for example MP3, WMA, WAV etc., these can be emailed to the transcription company, if they are small enough.  If the files are huge in size, transcription service providers like ScriptoSphere provide an upload page, where people can browse and select their audio files from their computer and upload it.

These files are then downloaded by the transcriber, who then transcribes it as quickly as possible with the help of a transcription software, a word processor software and several transcription equipments like a digital noise-canceling headphone, transcription foot pedals, sound amplifiers and so on.  After these files are transcribed, a highly trained and qualified proofreader then takes the transcript and edits it thoroughly, making the transcript much easier to read, grammatically correct, clean and concise and pretty much print-ready.

Because of the smaller file-size of these audio files, the whole transcription process takes almost only 1% of the time it used to take two decades ago.  This has proven to be extremely useful for people wanting to outsource their work, for PhD candidates who are also full time workers, for multinationals who can’t do this work in-house etc. etc.

Audio transcription rates

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Email us for a quote or further details: service@scriptosphere.com