Summary of the Week

Well its been an amazing week weather wise; its been absolutely beautiful and definitely the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

Its been a really productive week here at KATTS too.

I have transcribed and proofread over eight hours of audio this week. This includes staff appraisal interview transcription, patent application transcription and corporate video transcription.


And next week is more of the same together with three hours of conference transcription thrown in.

So its going to be a cracking start to October.

To find out more about transcription services feel free to visit the KATTS website.

Have a great month!

Interview transcription formatting

Outsourcing your interview transcription to KATTS could save you hours of time. A 30 minute interview with one individual can take approximately three hours to transcribe by a competent transcriptionist. This does not include proofreading time.  


I have transcribed numerous interviews for many different clients and they all require their own particular interview transcription formatting.

Indented paragraphs

For this reason I don’t use interview templates that are set in stone; it’s all very flexible so you can decide exactly how you want your interview transcripts to look.



Here are some things you may wish to consider for your interview transcription formatting:



• If you are studying with a university ask your tutor if there is a preferred interview transcription format for the course you are doing.

• Do you want the participants to be identified in the interview transcript; for example by their initials or I = Interviewer, P = Participant or another method of identification?

• 

  

  Unindented paragraphs

  Indented or unindented paragraphs. See the images on this page for examples of indented and unindented paragraphs in interview transcripts.

• Do you want a large left or right margin to accommodate analysis notes?

• Do you want the audio to be typed into a table with rows and columns that can be converted to text?

As mentioned above, I am flexible with regards to interview transcription formatting and can usually provide an example interview template that will suit your requirements. However, in cases where you may need a particular interview transcription format I can adjust the interview template to accommodate this. Alternatively you can send me your own interview template.

If you would like further information about interview transcription please visit the interview transcription page of my website or contact me.

Did you find this article useful? Please leave a comment.

Transcription Projects Update

Below is a snapshot of part of the KATTS home page as it appeared on 24 Aug 2011 in the Google cache:

King Audio Transcription and Typing Services (KATTS) work on a variety of transcription projects including for example most recently: focus group transcription, interview transcription, international conference transcription, video production company transcription, patent application transcription, museum transcriptions, disciplinary hearing / appraisal interview transcription for an HR department and oral history interview transcription.

This information has now been updated and can be viewed at www.kingaudio.co.uk.

Great start to 2011

Well I have reached the end of my first working week of 2011 and what a cracking week it has been. I've been working on a really fascinating oral history interview transcription project for one of my clients, together with some Patent transcription and some legal transcription for next week. All in all it looks like its going to be a good year!

How has 2011 been for you so far?

Organic feedback: interview transcription

"Hi Sarah

Just wanted to say thank you, super fast turn-around, much appreciated!"

This is my client's organic feedback in relation to HR interview transcription. By 'organic' I mean it is feedback that the client has given with no prompt from me.

If you have a LinkedIn account you can see some recommendations for KATTS' transcription services here.

Hey! What did you say?

Certain transcriptions take longer to transcribe than others, this is because I have to recognise words and voices. The stronger the accent, the harder it is for me to understand.

This isn’t usually a problem because I am an experienced transcriber (30 years) and can understand people more clearly. If there is a word I can’t understand I look up what it sounds like and distinguish what it is.

It also depends on the speed the person speaks at. Sometimes faster speakers are harder to understand if they don’t speak clearly. But it’s not only that, if the audio recording isn’t very good quality or you get a lot of background noise in the recording the transcription process can be more difficult.

These are things to bear in mind if you are recording say interviews for transcription. Digital recorders are pretty good these days, but it's always wise to do a sound check with your audio equipment and listen back with headphones.

If you would like to find out more about my transcription services please visit my website at http://www.kingaudio.co.uk/

Thanks

How long does transcription take?

I'm going to talk about factors that can influence transcription turnaround times and primarily the factors that can increase the time it takes to transcribe an audio file.

The quality of a recording can have a big influence on how long a transcription will take. A noisy environment with lots of background noises can play havoc with the transcription process.

For instance I had an interview transcription that had been recorded in a fairly busy café or restaurant. The microphone picked up all the other customers, their children and the coffee machine that hissed and popped every few minutes. At first this was amusing to listen to in a ‘fly on the wall’ sort of way but it almost completely obscured the voices of the participants and soon had me losing my sanity. This added to the transcription time and to the amount of inaudible words in the final transcript.

The speed of transcription can also depend on the speakers themselves and whether they speak clearly and at an audible rate. Some people are fast speakers and this coupled with say stumbling over words can make a transcription more difficult.

A good rate of volume on a recording is important. A good quality recording with a low volume that cannot be increased can be as troublesome to a transcriber as a poor quality recording.

Bear in mind that your transcription services provider may not be familiar with the subject matter of your recording and it would therefore be very useful to give them as much information as you can about the contents of the recording, i.e. names of speakers and URLs of websites that relate to the subject matter.

If your recording contains more than two speakers who do not introduce themselves then give your transcriber the order in which they first speak so the transcriber can try to recognise the voices of the individuals.

Here’s a quick checklist to save your transcriber’s sanity and get you the best transcription turnaround:

Avoid noisy environments
Encourage your participants to speak clearly and at an audible level
Check out the quality and volume of your recording by recording a 2 minute test file and listening back through headphones
Provide ancillary information to your transcription service provider


Check out King Audio Transcription & Typing Services for more information.