Transcription

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 could 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.