Free Online Transcription Tool for Transcribers

Suppose you have audio files like interviews, radio shows, lectures, presentations, or even regular conversations that need to be converted into a written format. In that case, all you need is a good transcriber. If you’re wondering, “What I need to know about transcription and transcribers,” this article will help you understand what transcription is, who needs it, and the various options available.

What Is Transcription About?

The job of a transcriber consists of converting an audio file into a written format. It can be daunting when the audio quality is poor, the speaker has a rich, foreign accent, or, worse still, when timestamping is required.

All new transcribers should remember that it’s impossible to predict your time on a task before listening to the content. Below are some of the influencing factors:

• How many people are talking

• How fast their speech is

• The clarity of the audio recording (background noise or connection problems)

• How clearly the people speak (overlapping voices, accents, mumbling, yelling).

How Transcription Works

Like most things today, transcription wasn’t always straightforward in the beginning. Because tapes were originally used, transcriptionists had to devise a way to stop or rewind the recording while typing conveniently. As a result, a pedal was used to help speed up the transcription process. 

Fortunately, present-day transcribers have an abundance of modern technologies to aid them. All you need is a computer as the keyboard replaces the pedals and a preferred software like the https://gotranscript.com/tool, which saves your files every 30 seconds and allows you to pause the recording while typing.

Who Benefits from Transcription?

Most forward-thinking business owners have migrated to digital platforms to ensure the expansion and longevity of their companies. Integrating translation and transcription into every aspect of your organization is key to connecting and uniting people worldwide. Below is a list of some business professionals who benefit significantly from transcription services.

Law Firms, Attorneys & Other Legal Professionals

The legal field is a top beneficiary of transcription services. Attorneys, court reporters, jurors, paralegals, and judges require any audio or video footage transcribed for presentation in court. These documents act as support to the evidence and also help to eliminate ambiguity or misinterpretation in unclear cases.

Medical and Healthcare Providers

Medical transcription plays a significant role in the medical field as it saves practices and healthcare professionals time, money, and resources. These services apply to many activities, including improving the efficiency of medical research interviews, patients’ medical history and physicals, operative reports, discharge summaries, etc.

Students and Lecturers

Modern education and learning institutions have embraced technology to accommodate the changing times. As such, it’s not surprising that students, lecturers, and other academicians are some of the biggest beneficiaries of transcription.

Today, you can register and complete a course without setting foot in a physical classroom. Academicians can pursue their endeavors thanks to transcripts of class lectures, seminars, and research interviews, without transcribing themselves.

Podcasters

Podcasts are excellent avenues to share music, news, political opinions, and much more with people who share a similar view. And since podcasts are based on any niche, students and researchers often refer to them as educational tools in their course programs. Therefore, by providing podcast transcripts, your business will attract more followers, including people who are hard of hearing.

Business Entrepreneurs

Most successful business owners will agree that keeping records of their daily company transactions is crucial. And this entails everything from interviews and meetings to phone calls, performance reviews, and more.

With the help of transcription services, you’ll now have written records of all activities in addition to audio and video files. This allows fast access to information for business analysis and forecasting.

Authors

Did you know that authors don’t necessarily write books themselves? Consider a university professor who lectures in the mornings, mentors kids in the afternoons, spends time with family in the evening, but also wants to write a book. Such busy individuals will require a transcriptionist to help them turn their thoughts and ideas into sensational books.

Types of Transcription

We live in times when any content your mind can imagine is readily available. Hello, internet! Even better, they’ll also be someone interested in seeing the media. The section below highlights three transcription options to help you find the best fit for your content.

Verbatim Transcription

If you want every aspect of the audio or video file captured as it happened, verbatim transcription is the way to go! This means every sound, e.g., throat clearing, coughing, stutter, door slam, sneeze, laughter, and any background noise, will be captured in the transcripts. Other non-verbal cues in the video, like heavy breathing, sneering, winking, waving, and other expressions, will also be included.

Edited Transcription

Edited (or “clean verbatim”) transcripts are preferred when the content creator wants to deliver quality documents. Here, grammatical errors, unnecessary words, phrases, and sentences are omitted without losing sight of the intended core meaning. The point of edited transcription is to appeal to formal readers and brands. Additionally, the transcripts can easily be translated into any desired language or even printed material.

Intelligent Transcription

This category falls in between verbatim and edited transcription. Here, transcriptionists focus on accuracy by performing light editing. They’ll eliminate filler words like ‘um,’ repetitions, long pauses, facial expressions, stammers, and slang, among others. The result is a transcript that represents factual occurrences alongside the general tone and essence of the message.

DIY Transcription Vs. Outsourcing Transcription Services

There are numerous reasons why people prefer to transcribe audio and video content themselves and vice versa. And while there’s no wrong choice between the two, here are factors to consider to help you decide what works for you.

• Manual transcription takes a long time

For every hour of audio or video content, it takes a skilled transcriptionist four hours to complete the task. The same task will require significantly more time for inexperienced transcribers.

Manual transcription is tedious

A quality transcript should be accurate, well-formatted, and free of grammatical errors. These activities are time-consuming and tiring, making outsourcing transcription services more appealing to business owners.

• Manual transcription is not efficient

Although in-house transcription may save your project budget, your business may still feel the negative impact. Doing the tasks yourself means wasting time pausing and replaying files, leading to delays and additional costs.

• Poor audio quality is hazardous to manual transcription

In addition to being time-consuming, DIY transcription is almost impossible with background noise, heavy foreign accents, crosstalk, and other sound interferences. 

Final Thoughts

A professional transcriber will always do their best to transcribe your content as accurately as possible, ensuring you get a text that’s easy to read and navigate. Whether it’s a presentation, lesson, talk show, lecture, or anything else you want to convert into a text document, GoTranscript offers affordable, high-quality transcripts regardless of your content type!