General Transcription

Business enterprises thrive on transcription services and they do their best to outsource transcription services to freelancers or install a transcription cell in their organization to improve their business relationship with clients. Transcription is a job that requires a lot of hard work, patience and dedication. What a transcriptionist does is convert audio files, handwritten text or photographs into digital format for later use. There are various kinds of transcription that is done both online and offline. You must have heard of transcription services like - medical, legal, audio, digital, media, business, financial and so on. These are the various industries where transcription services are done. But transcription is done on the basis of speech too. Each person speaks in a different manner, with intonations and accent. To put forward a verbal speech as it is, is difficult since its not easy to understand and capture the various idiosyncrasies. Following are three basic formats used in transcription services.

Intelligent Verbatim : Is the most popular and commonly used transcription format. People have their verbal quirks all the time and it varies from person to person, but most people have the habit of using whew, ugh, umm, ah, you know, you like, kinda, kind of and so on. These are a kind of verbal fillers when a recording is done. In a general sense, they are meaningless and actually hinder the normal flow of speech. When the transcription is done, the general meaning of the recording is kept intact, while retaining only a little bit of the speaker’s recording.

Complete Verbatim : This kind of transcription is important for legal proceedings and financial matters. The exact content of the speech and the emotions of the speaker are very important. All the verbal quirks of the speaker, his dialectic patterns and expressions are retained.

Edited Transcription : Just as the name suggests, its not mandatory to capture each and every quirk or expression of the speaker. This format is more commonly used in medical and educational transcription services. Pauses, expressions, fillers et al are edited and a good readable version is created.

There is no dearth of transcription jobs for those seeking it. There are so many transcription companies ready to give you both online and offline training to get you transcription jobs. Once you come armed with a passing certificate, you are on the way to becoming a successful transcriptionist. All you need to have is good hearing skills, a ear for detecting change in the audio and the ability to type quickly. Proficiency in Microsoft Word is also mandatory and you need to have some kind of background knowledge in the type of transcription you are going to do.