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Typical
Transcription Projects Offered
- Legal: Court proceedings
-- Recorded hearings and trials from Superior,
District, Municipal and Juvenile Courts. Transcripts
are legally certified for court filing and presentation.
Digital Courtroom Proceedings from CD’s
obtained from the respective court. Also produce
transcripts from videos and cassette tapes.
-
Technical:
Client presentations, roundtables, focus groups,
seminars, meetings.
- Advertising:
Press conferences, scripts, interviews, newspaper
advertising layout.
Working
With Your Transcriber
Transcribers
must sometimes listen repeatedly to very sensitive
and/or confidential interview material. Following
are some tips to consider in working with your transcriber:
Speak clearly, slowly
and at an audible level;
-
Record in a quiet
environment;
-
Spell out any technical
words, names, etc.;
-
Start recording well
before you speak.
You
cannot do too much to ensure good sound quality.
- A good quality
tape recorder or sound system with strategically
placed microphones.
- Practice using your equipment. Know what it is
and is not capable of. Learn how to position the
microphone and reduce background noise.
- If you are doing group interviews or have multiple
parties speaking in a courtroom, maintain a
list of speakers so that your transcriber can easily
identify each voice.
- Check the quality of the sound on your recording
during the proceedings to make sure the system
is recording at a level comfortable for the transcriber
to hear. This will prevent “inaudible” notations
placed throughout your transcript. Poor quality
sound can double or even triple the time it takes
to do the transcription.
Provide
relevant information about the research.
- Discuss the need for confidentiality
and the measures that you will take to provide
ongoing support to your Transcriber. Outline your
objectives and provide information about the proceedings;
e.g. court in which the proceedings took place,
parties’ names,
case number and date of proceedings; provide witness
list and name spellings of persons involved in
the proceedings (such as spouse and childrens’ names
in domestic proceedings). Provide a list of terminology
used, if there are words that your transcriber
might be unfamiliar with.
Work
with your Transcriber.
- Set realistic goals for completion of the work and
respect your transcriber's need to spread out the
work to accommodate other jobs.
- Always check the transcript and correct mis-hearings
or other systematic problems as early on as possible.
Give positive as well as corrective feedback about
the quality of the work and the time it takes.
Listen
to your Transcriber.
- Feel free to talk with your transcriber at regular
intervals. Provide your transcriber with pertinent
contact information.
- Ask your transcriber
to keep a list of questions about the work and/or
issues for discussion.
- Acknowledge
the importance and implications of the work.
How
long does it take to type an audio cassette tape?
- For your general guidance, one
speaks about four times faster than one can type,
so a one-hour tape should take four to six hours
to transcribe (this is based on persons speaking
clearly). The
quality of the recording can affect the time greatly.
- Please
note that the time taken to transcribe a tape is
dependent on: Clarity of the tape, clarity of those
speaking, regional accents of speaker(s), speed
at which one speaks, number of people speaking
together with the number and position of microphones,
and content of the recording and amount of technical
terms used. There are times when it may take much
longer than this. For instance, a one hour recording
containing a speaker dictating notes clearly and
precisely directly into a microphone, may take
four hours to transcribe, whereas a one hour tape
containing a meeting with many speakers, perhaps
with only one microphone, may take anywhere up
to eight hours to transcribe.
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