2
October
2008
I’ve had an astonishing number of transcription requests come in recently that are very poor quality recordings, and the biggest culprit is the coffee machine! It really is essential, if you want a good quality recording, to record in a quiet room, and not in a café. However nice it is to have comfy chairs, music playing, great real coffee on tap and a relaxed atmosphere, you won’t get a good quality recording in a café!One client even recorded an interview in a café near closing time - it avoided the coffee machine problem as no one was buying coffee, but two other problems emerged. The staff were rather pointedly clearing up around them, so scraping of chairs and scrubbing of tables was beautifully recorded, but sadly the voices weren’t. The other problem was that they couldn’t finish the interview because they got thrown out at closing time!
To avoid similar mistakes have a look at our website page on interview transcription and my article on transcription for research interviews
Posted under General Transcription
22
January
2008
There are a huge variety of voice recorders out there. They all do different things, and which one you get will depend on what’s most important to you. If you want a voice recorder that’s dedicated to just that, then see my article on getting the recording equipment that’s right for your transcription needs. But if you’re prime issue is price (as it is with many students in particular) and if you already have an iPod (which many students, among others, do) then why not use that?
You will need to buy an external microphone, but that’s much cheaper than buying a voice recorder that you can download files on to your PC from – which you’d need to do to send them to your transcriber.
You can’t do this from all iPods but the later models will all allow it – the voice memo software is already on there.
Recordings are saved in wav format, which isn’t ideal for sending on for transcription, as the files are very large; but having said that they are good quality and our transcription service is able to cope with upload and download of larger files.
Full details of how to do it are available on the Apple website so why not have a look?
Posted under Digitial audio files, General Transcription
19
November
2007
OK, this has very little to do with transcription, but it’s great! Another one of those charity websites, but instead of ‘click on this boring old advertise link once a day and we’ll donate something’ you can donate by clicking the correct definition of a bunch of weird (and some not so weird) words. It’s not perfect - there’s the odd misspelt word in there, which for a vocabulary site isn’t ideal, and because the definitions are one or two words long on the whole, they’re obviously only one possible meaning of the word. Also of course you could donate more by working for half an hour and donating your earnings than by playing on this site, freerice.com and donating grains of rice. But it’s fun, it’s educational and a bunch of us had a fun competition going for a while to see who could reach the most difficult vocab level (which if you want to play, is level 50) first. Each time you get a few definitions right you go up a vocab level, and when you get one wrong you come down one.
Congratulations to my mum, Ruth Piatkus, for winning our little competition … a large bar of Galaxy awaits you.
No prizes on the site, but you do get the satisfaction of knowing that for every right word you donate 10 grains of rice to charity! ;o)
Posted under Grammar
19
November
2007
I have just spent two or three days editing a bunch of interviews for a client because he mistakenly thought he wanted them verbatim but in fact after reading the first few he realised they were rather hard to analyse. They read something like this: ‘So can I just ask you what, how, how, how … erm, what, I mean how er was it, how was it that you, when you were erm, thinking about the, the space programme, how was is that you er eventually de, de, decided to pull out of the project?’ When they were edited to remove excess ‘verbage’ the interviews (which were incidentally nothing to do with the space programme, I do respect client confidentiality!) were reduced in length by between 10 and 20 percent! So be really sure when you say you need verbatim - it’s a costly mistake, especially if you then have to pay for two to three days of editing! For more information see the information about Verbatim versus intelligent verbatim transcription on my website.
Posted under General Transcription
25
October
2007
I have just finished transcribing a conference for a client. Since they took the plunge and went digital their conference recordings have improved enormously … so I was a bit surprised to find that the audience parts of the question and answer session were rather poor on this recording. The rest of the recording was absolutely fine.
On returning the completed transcript I mentioned this to my client and she replied that this wasn’t too surprising as their digital recording system was down and the whole thing was recorded on a Dictaphone!
So I went from being amazed at how poor the question and answer session was, to amazed at how good the rest of it was! Nevertheless, I would still not recommend recording a conference on a Dictaphone if you have any choice in the matter. Dictaphones are great for dictation … and usually that’s about as far as it goes. I think this must have been a particularly good one! See my article on getting recording equipment that’s right for you for more information on this.
So what should you do when recording a conference for transcription? Well, the fundamentals are (usually!) a good recording system, a roving microphone for the question and answer sessions, and providing your transcriptionist with key words, a speaker list and a delegate list if possible. Full details are available in my articles on this subject, What the conference organiser needs to know and outsourcing transcription for conferences .
Posted under General Transcription
9
October
2007
Podcasts are an increasingly popular means of putting information across over the internet, but many people are missing out on an important aspect of this. Providing a text version too.
It may seem silly to go to all the trouble of recording and broadcasting an interview on your website, only to get it transcribed into a text version. However, there are a number of reasons for doing so. One important point is that hearing-impaired people may struggle to, or be completely unable to, follow a podcast. Another is searchability. This has two aspects. Firstly someone listening to a podcast will be unable to search for a particular point. They many want to do this because they’ve already listened to the podcast and they want to revisit a specific point, or because they’re familiar with the interviewee and want to know what he/she said about a particular point. Secondly, search engines, although they are working hard to be able to access video, can’t search through the speech itself to pick out words and match with key words in the same way that they do for text. This means that a podcast that’s really relevant to a particular point may be missed entirely by the search engines when bringing up results about that point – unless you have a text version available.
So, if you’re thinking about doing a podcast then think about getting it transcribed too! For advice on getting a good recording and a good transcription, see my top ten tips.
Posted under General Transcription
9
October
2007
If you’re planning a conference some careful thought needs to go into your post-conference pack. Usually with academic conferences the speakers will submit full papers relating to their talks, so there is no need to have the conference recorded and transcribed, because the conference proceedings can be put together from these. However, this is rarely the case for other conferences such as business-related or political meetings. In such cases the speakers are often recorded for later transcription, but there are a number of things a conference organiser needs to consider when seeking to get the recordings transcribed. These include getting decent recording equipment in the first place, making sure that if you’re going to have a panel session all the panel have microphones AND you have a roving mike in the audience, and, assuming you want the delegates asking the questions to be identified in the transcript, providing your transcriptionist with a delegate list, not just a speaker list. For other things that should be considered please see my article on conference transcription
Posted under General Transcription
28
September
2007
Well I might draw the line at ugly, but there is a huge variation in the quality of dictation we receive for transcription – even sometimes from within the same company. So I’ve written an article, which you can view here, giving some tips on producing better dictations. Obviously a good, clear dictation can be transcribed faster and more accurately than a poor, muddled one, and that in turn will save you time and money!
Posted under General Transcription
7
September
2007
I am sometimes asked whether we can transcribe from video. The simple answer would be no, but that’s rather misleading and probably the best way to make a potential client decide to go somewhere else!
The fact is that it is not possible, to the best of my knowledge, to transcribe directly from either digital or audio video files, but it is entirely possible to convert either kind to a workable format. The reason one cannot transcribe directly is simple. There is no transcription kit available to do it, and frankly there probably isn’t the demand for one. The transcription kit is fundamentally the foot pedal that allows the transcriptionist to rewind and fast forward through the recording, and the player (software or a tape player) that allows changes in the speed of play, volume, tone etc. As well as being a fast typist with expert knowledge a professional transcriptionist can (almost certainly) get through your recordings faster than you can because they have this nifty bit of kit (or usually several nifty bits of kit, for mini tapes, micro tapes, standard tapes and digital audio recordings).
Digital video (at least some formats) can be converted to an audio equivalent e.g. mp4 (video) to mp3 (audio) quite easily by running the video file through a bit of conversion software. We do this at no extra charge as it is not difficult or time consuming. See the digital video pages on our website for more information.
Converting VHS video to audio is a different matter. We do it, but we don’t do it with big happy smiles on our faces and we do have to charge. It’s not that challenging or expensive but it is a bit time consuming. So … if you have a VHS video that needs transcribing, whether it be a conference or debate or a documentary that you want a transcript of for personal study purposes, you could convert it to a digital recording and save yourself some money! My article, How to Record Digital Audio from VHS Tape for Transcription, will tell you how.
Posted under Digitial audio files, General Transcription
29
August
2007
As I sit transcribing a very interesting piece about commercialisation of products I have the tune of a Tom Jones (or originally ‘The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’ I believe) song going round in my head … with slightly altered lyrics. ‘Why, why, WHY verbatim? ‘ Now I can fully understand the need for a truly verbatim transcription in a legal document for the courts, or in a study of the use of spoken language, but why on earth does someone need all the ums and ers, coughs, repeated words etc. in a transcription about bringing products to market? Perhaps, I thought, my client doesn’t understand the difference between verbatim and intelligent verbatim? (If you don’t understand this either, please see my article on whether you really need verbatim transcription.) Apparently, however, she does. So, considering it takes longer, costs more, and as far as I can see (as a non-expert in this field) adding nothing useful to the transcript … why is it necessary? I haven’t plucked up the courage to ask yet … but I’m working on it. I’m guessing it’s something to do with a particular theory behind interviewing, but if anyone can tell me exactly what it is I’d really love to know.
Posted under General Transcription