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Typical Transcription Projects Offered

• Legal: Court proceedings, hearings, trials. Transcripts are legally certified for court presentation. Digital Courtroom Proceedings -CD Recording.

• Medical: Medical symposiums, medical information.

• Technical: Client presentations, roundtables, focus groups, seminars, meetings.

• Advertising: Press conferences, scripts, interviews, newspaper advertising layout

Working With Your Transcriptionist

Working with Your Transcriptionist. Transcription is both an art and a craft. It is often an integral part of qualitative health research.  Transcriptionist must sometimes listen repeatedly to very sensitive and/or painful interview material. Following are some tips to consider in working with your Transcriptionist.

To keep transcription time to a minimum, try to bear in mind the following points:

• 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 with an appropriate microphone. You may want to consult with your A/V department in choosing your equipment. Read the manual and know how to clean the recording head.

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, have an observer maintain a list of speakers so that your Transcriptionist can easily identify each voice.

Check the quality of the sound on your audio tapes before passing them on to your Transcriptionist. Poor quality sound can double or even triple the time it takes to do the transcription. (It is sometimes possible to improve on a poor quality recording but this adds another step in the process.)

Offer a comfortable, secure place to work. Check and clean the heads on your transcription machine. Provide a headset for use with the machine. This makes for easier listening and preserves confidentiality.

Provide relevant information about the research.

Describe the nature of the work before the Transcriptionist agrees to do it. Discuss the need for confidentiality and the measures that you will take to provide ongoing support to your Transcriptionist.

Outline the research objectives and provide information about the topic of the interview (e.g., pamphlets about specific diseases). Provide a list of terminology (with correct and phonetic spelling) if there are words that your Transcriptionist might be unfamiliar with.

Work with your Transcriptionist.

Set realistic goals for completion of the work and respect your Transcriptionist's need to spread out the work and/or take frequent breaks when working with especially sensitive material.

Be responsible for your end. Check the transcript and correct mishearings 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 Transcriptionist. 

Talk with your Transcriptionist, on the telephone or in person, at regular intervals. Provide your Transcriptionist with contact information. 

Ask your Transcriptionist to keep a list of feelings or questions about the work and/or issues for discussion. Clarify that this is an important part of the work process. Treat what you learn as valuable data in and of itself. 

Expect that your Transcriptionist will have opinions about the materials. Learn to listen non-judgmentally, just as you do with research subjects. Where appropriate, incorporate what you learn into your analysis.

Acknowledge the importance and implications of the work.

Consider of the implications of transcription in your application for ethical review. 

Acknowledge your Transcriptionist and her/his labor in your conference presentations and publications.

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 one person speaking clearly and following the guidelines given above). Note, however, that this can vary greatly.

Please note that the time taken to transcribe a tape is dependent on: Clarity of the tape, clarity of the one 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 tape and amount of technical terms used. There are times when it may take much longer than this. For instance, a one hour tape 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 anything up to eight hours to transcribe.