How to Choose Right Professional Transcription Services

Transcription job isn’t an easy task. It is important to look for agencies that provide  professional transcription services to meet your expectation. Not only that, a professional transcriptionist should be able to provide a high rate of accuracy as they use their techniques when doing your job. But not everyone understands the importance of professional transcription services. Hiring a wrong transcriptionist may even damage your reputation. Let’s dive in more to understand all about professional transcription services.  

What are Transcription Services?

Transcription is a common task in Malaysia but not everyone needs it. Some may not know what is it about. So, let’s get to know what is transcription service before we go deeper.

Occasionally, you may have been listening to some audio or video and couldn’t catch what they say. At this time, you would wish it would be in a written format where you get to understand more what the audio or video is talking about. This is where transcription service comes in. 

Transcription service is a transcriptionist listens to an audio or video recording, and covert them into written text. It may sound simple, but you are requiring to certain skill such as language skill, and focus. 

Many fields will require transcription service, such as academic, medical, and especially media industries. A transcriptionist helps to preserve the spoken content when they write into text. 

A professional transcriptionist will review the content multiple times to ensure the accuracy. They may need to adapt to transcript style according to client needs. Professionals such as educators and content creators are slowly requiring professional transcription services to allow people to access to their contents. 

Importance of Professional Transcription

Accuracy

Accuracy is very important is transcription. A transcriptionist misheard a word can change the meaning of a sentence. Can you imagine that a doctor’s note being transcribed wrongly? It can be a disaster as it is concerning life and death. Thay is why accuracy is matters.

Incorrect transcription can cause a lot of problem, such as risking your credibility, getting yourself involving a suit case. This is why you need to hire a professional to do transcription.  

A skilled transcriptionist should understand the context and the specific language in the specific industry which they are transcribing. Information in certain skills cannot be compromised, such as medical, law, business, etc.  

Besides, accuracy can improve searchability which help you to find something easily in a two-hour recording. You just need to use “Ctrl + F” without the need of scrolling the whole document endlessly. 

Time-Saving

It can be a nightmare to transcribe the video or audio if you do it yourself. It can take a few hours to transcribe a one-hour video without any experience. Hiring a professional can cut down half of the time without compromising the quality of the transcript. 

You can focus on other important things with the help of a professional transcriptionist instead of spending hours listening to audio to find out what the video is all about. 

There are also other benefits of using a professional transcript, such as you wouldn’t need to rewatch the entire webinar if you have the transcript of it. It allows you look for the key points easily. It also allows non-native speaker to understand the video better. 

Common Challenges Transcriptionists Faces During Transcribing

Even the best transcriptionist will still face challenges during transcribing, especially with poor-quality files. 

Common challenges include:

• Echoes from large rooms: Echoes will affect transcriptionist to capture work that the speaker is saying
• Background noise: If the audio is recorded in places, such as near the road or a factory area, it will include noisy background, affecting the quality of audio.
• Low-mic volume: The voice of the speaker may not be loud enough, affecting the transcriptionist to capture.
• Crosstalk: Crosstalk recording into the video will interrupt the transcriptionist to capture the speak that he supposed to transcribe.

To help transcriptionist to be more accurate in transcribing, ensure the recordings are recorded in quiet environment by using quality microphones. The speaker should also speak clearly and not being interrupted. 

Accents and dialects are also another challenges that transcriptionist will fact. For example, English is a common language spoken everywhere, but the accent in America will be different from Asian countries. 
With the help of glossary or a speaker guide, such as providing recurring names or foreign terms may help.

How to Choose the Right Transcription Service Provider

There are many agencies providing transcription services, but how do you select the right transcription provider?

Here are some factors you should take into consideration when you are choosing one:

1. Experience: Check out if they have experience in doing transcription for your industry.
2. Reviews: Take reviews on the selected service provider into consideration.
3. Turnaround flexibility: You may need your transcription within a short period of time, check if they can meet tight deadlines.
4. Customer support: They should be able response to you fast. 

You may also consider asking some questions before you hire them. Ask them questions such as:

1. Are they using human transcribers?
2. What is the accuracy rate?
3. How do they handle confidential files?

Just ask them any questions that is related to your task. If they can’t provide any answers or their answers can’t satisfy you, you should walk away.