How to Get a Good/Bad Transcription


2019 08 03    |    etc    no date    2024 +    2025    entries    home

Transcriptionists sometimes perform feats that seem magical, but there's a lot of damned hard work that goes on to make it seem that way. When you spend your day with bad audio and people who can't communicate, it can sometimes be a herculean effort to create a finished product that is usable to a client.

I'm not going to give too much preamble, but just get to the list of things that clients should consider in order to ensure that they have the best chance of getting a good transcript.

  • Use proper recording equipment and have some understanding of the workings of sound and audio. Audio equipment doesn't work nor discern in the same way that the human ear does, so you can end up with some pretty bad files because you:

    • put the recording device too far from the speakers
    • expected a room full of people to be all picked up equally well by one small device
    • let people eat during your recording
    • played music in the background of your recording
    • recorded in a restaurant, echoey room, on the street, at the beach, in a factory, in any noisey area
    • didn't mic every speaker
    • didn't remove pets and small children from the room
    • didn't turn off your radio, TV, or other background sound-making device
    • recorded off a speakerphone
    • sat the recording device next to someone typing
    • did not use duplexing recording devices. A duplexing recording device means that when one person speaks, it won't blank out others.
    • turned the recording device on too early, before the relevant content started, and didn't turn it off when the relevant content ended. A room full of crosstalking people is impossible to transcribe, and is often quite uncomfortable to the eardrum, and is more often than not content that is utterly irrelevant to the thing that needs to be transcribed. But if you leave it in there we have to listen to it, and you're paying us for that time.
    • recorded with a device that was in a pocket or a purse. Do I really need to explain how that muffles and distorts human speech?


  • Or, on the social side of it:

    • used an interviewer who doesn't know how to interview,
    • who uses too many active listening interjections (okay, sure, yes, uh-hu, right, mm-hmm, etc). If it doesn't add to the situation, don't say it. In some cultures, of course, it's considered rude if you don't constantly indicate you're still listening, but in Western cultures - Canada, the UK, the US, it's considered rude and/or incredibly annoying to keep doing that
    • who interrupts the interviewee too frequently
    • who cuts off the interviewee
    • who doesn't listen to the interviewee and keeps asking the same/similar questions
    • who doesn't understand that the interview is not about them


  • And even worse:

    • spoke with a subject who can't communicate, who can't string together a cohesive thought, who uses too much filler language (like, you know, kind of, sort of, uhm, etc.)


My advice to interviewees would be this:

  • Don't keep making noise just to fill space. It's okay not to talk long enough to formulate your thoughts in order to provide a more cohesive response that you're not stumbling over.

My advice to interviewers:

  • When you ask a question, shut the hell up long enough for the person to actually answer you; and when they do answer you, actually listen to what they say.
  • Real human conversation doesn't follow a script. Learn that the interviewee isn't there to follow your question script always, and roll with the punches. Sometimes you get better stuff when you just let things go, than whe you follow your 'recipe'.

My advice to clients in general:

  • Not all transcription work is done by bots, as I said. Don't assume it unless the company you went to specifically says it is.
  • Not all transcription work is done by "bored housewives". If you feel the need to be insulting or abusive about transcriptionists, have the good grace not to say it on the recording that you're handing in to be transcribed.
  • If you're going to use bad recording equipment, or not care about the outcome of your recording, you should have the good grace to keep that to yourself also, and not say it on the recording you're handing in. It's pretty rude to openly say you don't care about the audio quality because it's just going to a transcriptionist, so it doesn't matter how it sounds. It does matter. It matters a lot. I'm sure you've heard the expression, "Garbage in. Garbage out." Well…
  • Demeaning someone on whom you're depending, someone who's providing a service to you, is pretty crappy, and certainly takes the shine off your professionalism and general respect for others.
  • Some transcriptionists are highly trained, well-educated, deeply knowledgeable people. Just because they're not in a traditional workplace doing their work, doesn't make their work less valuable, and certainly doesn't devalue them either. Don't be arrogant about your work over another's.
  • Transcriptionists are not editors. Transcriptionists exist to type out what they hear, not what you want them to hear. If you need something tidied up, hire an editor or proofreader. There's a minimal amount of emptying out we're allowed to do, but that is only on some occasions, and can only consist of editing out false starts or filler words.

And the most important advice of all:

  • Don't take your recording device into the bathroom with you. We can tell. This also holds for anyone who's calling any kind of customer service while they're doing their personal business.

Transcriptionists can work wonders, but they aren't sound engineers. There's only so much they can do - and only so much they can be reasonably responsible for or expected to do. The rest is up to the client.

home    top