Interview Transcription: A Guide into Providing Legal Transcription
Interview Transcription Services Vary, and One of Them Deals with Legal Transcriptions Starting your own career as a transcriptionist might actually be a worthwhile business. Transcription service is unexpectedly needed in a lot of fields of work. To cater to different needs in different fields of work, transcription services are divided into several types of services. One of the services that we will get to know better in this article is interview transcription found in the discipline of law: legal transcription. Yes, people working in the law field of work also need transcription service. How so? Legal professionals involve a lot of interviewing than we thought. Pleadings, subpoenas, summonses, sworn statements, interrogations, hearings, and more occurrences happening in the court entail a lot of conversation and questioning that need to be documented. With the help of transcription, it helps legal professionals capture each detail to review later so allows them to focus to the interview, save their valuable time, and provide the documentation Furthermore, the documentation of these legal transcripts needs to follow specific requirements, especially when it comes to evidence for an ongoing case. Different districts, clients, and types of transcript may require different transcription formats. Thus, sorting the transcription documents could end up time-consuming. For much more effective work, it’s not uncommon to outsource a transcriptionist for the task. That way, those in law enforcement could save time and focus on other tasks needing immediate attention. Interview Transcription Service for Legal Documents: A Standard to Follow Legal documents, which closely relate to legal procedures, are tied to a strict standard for transcription. Hence, the interview transcription service for legal documents must also follow a set of rules and guidelines. There are at least five important points to note in transcribing legal documents. 1. Mastering the art of verbatim transcription The transcription for legal documents is in the form of verbatim transcription as the final documents of the transcription are exactly the same as the audio file. This includes mutters, speech errors, filler words, stutters, long pauses, and other sound heard in the audio file. Some even ask to include non-verbal signals or body languages written in the final transcription document. While such sounds are less necessary and often omitted in other types of interview transcription, they hold a significant difference in the law field. 2. Highlighting accuracy in noting who speaks what When it comes to an interview with more than two people, some speeches may overlap. As a transcriptionist, it is important to recognize the voices and precisely write who said what. Though it could sound like a simple mistake, writing the wrong person could really change the whole interview’s nuance. 3. Having legal terminology knowledge Transcribing legal documents, obviously, requires someone who is expert in legal terminology. The discipline of law comes with various terms that are only used by people working in the field. It is not enough to have a good ear but it is equally important that a legal transcriptionist is fairly aware of legal terminologies. Not to mention, several Latin phrases used to explain the testimony. If you have no background knowledge on legal terminology, you will find it difficult to write down “affidavit”, “subpoena”, “nolo contendere”. 4. Getting certified The needs for certification may differ from state to state. This goes the same for the requirements to pass the certification. The major pro from having a hold of the certification is the reassurance you can give your clients over how professional your service is. Clients can also know how much the transcriptionists they choose in understanding legal terminology. 5. Ensuring confidentiality Confidentiality is pretty much a basic rule in transcription service. Additionally, it is essential to assure all parties involved in the project can guarantee confidentiality by themselves. To realize it, professional transcriptionists are trained to understand the ethics of the business that they will not share files and documents inappropriately. The Bottom Line: Interview Transcription Service Leads Interview transcription service could be helpful for people working in the field of law. By outsourcing for transcribing audio files, professionals and employees involved in the work field can maintain their focus on other tasks with more urgency to finish. However, being interview transcriptionists for legal documents need to pay attention to a set of strict rules and guidelines. Appealing yourself as a legal transcriptionist might be a challenging, yet worthwhile career to choose!
Transcription Tips: The 101 Guide to Transcribe Professionally
To Transcribe Professionally, A Transcriptionist Has to Know The Correct Ways to Complete A Project. However, A Transcription Project Has Difficulties That Pose Challenges, Especially for Beginners. Worry Not, There Are Transcription Tips to Solve Them. Transcription tips are highly useful especially for beginners. This is due to the difficulties that exist within a transcription project. Surprisingly, in contrast to what people believe, transcription does not simply require efforts and time to change audio text to a written form. It requires competencies, such as project management, and certain skills, such as listening, to get the job done. Accordingly, those skills and competencies are essential to bear with transcription challenges The common challenges are usually regarding project management, technical difficulties, and background knowledge. For beginner transcriptionists, these common challenges may hinder project progression to a significant degree. That being said, there are solutions to every problem, including these transcription challenges. But what are those solutions? Transcription Tips and Tricks: Solutions to Its Common Problems For beginner transcriptionists, the most common challenges are usually about (1) project management, (2) technical difficulties, and (3) background knowledge. To get past those problems, here are tips that help. 1. Project Management Project management is arguably the most problematic challenge while working on a transcription project. This is because it affects the whole project flow, from start to finish. The challenges cover management, communication, workload adjustments, rework, and revision. Regarding challenges about project management, the key is to understand what the project is and how to execute it. For that reason, it is of importance for a project manager to know the concept, plans, and process of a certain project. To do so, a project manager can create a daily schedule and target to ensure that the whole team can keep up with deadlines. Furthermore, it is also critical to establish rules and guidelines. They should give clarity to how to complete tasks, rework, revision, project timeline, and collaboration between team members. Consequently, each transcriptionist in a team should work based on the guidelines in order to ace this project. More importantly, while setting up the guidelines, a project manager should also understand the diverse competencies of each member. This will help workload adjustments within a team. Also, in a project, there also exists communication problems, internally and externally. To solve the internal problem, it is grave for each transcriptionist to discuss project updates, progression, and difficulties on a daily basis. While working for clients, it is suggested to frequently update them about the progress. That way, clients will know what to expect about the project quality and when it will finish. 2. Technical Difficulties The second problem is pertinent to technical difficulties. This relates to the files and devices/equipment. Some problems, such as poor device quality, are controllable and others, such as inaudible files, are uncontrollable. There are also natural difficulties that may exist, for example lengthy files. Naturally, a team can avoid controllable problems. For example, preparing proper devices such as highly sensitive headphones will get rid of the problems. Next, upon encountering inaudible files, there are several tips that will help reduce the problems. For instance, adjusting audio volume via volume control and using audio-editing software to enhance voice and reduce noise are the easiest ways for beginners. However, if those solutions don’t work, you can always let your clients know that these problems exist. That way, should your clients have backup files, it probably can help lessen your challenges. Despite everything, this is the very last resort. Also, to mitigate the risk of boredom and focus lost due to constantly listening to lengthy files, segmenting the files into several parts can help. A transcriptionist, then, can take a small break in between those segments. 3. Background knowledge Upon transcribing a file, it is necessary to understand what the file is about. That’s why, having a proper background knowledge about the topic will help a transcriptionist understand the context. Unfortunately, this sometimes also becomes a problem for beginners. Luckily, unlike the previous two categories, this one is easier to deal with. One way to handle the problem is to conduct a quick research about the topic. You can find reading resources available on the Internet, like the ones on online articles. Another way is to listen to the file at least once before transcribing it. This will, at the very least, give a rough sketch on what it talks about. The Bottom Line: Transcription Tips to Every Common Problem Transcription tips for beginners vary. Depending on the problem, there is always a solution a beginner transcriptionist can easily conduct. In addition, the general tips implementable to all transcription challenges are establishing guidelines, preparing devices and knowledge, as well as communicating frequently.
Data Transcription Challenges: The Overly Not-so-simple Obstacles
Data Transcription Has Challenges That General Transcription May Not Possess despite Being Slightly Indifferent. Accordingly, What Are Those Challenges? Data transcription is slightly indifferent from general transcription. Both transform information, either audiovisual or audio, into a written format. However, dissimilar to general transcription which basically produces a transcript, data transcription creates transcripts for research or business purposes, specifically case studies and white paper. Considering the difference between data transcription and general transcription, their challenges also vary. General transcription does not serve specific purposes, but data transcription does. As mentioned above, data transcription results in data for research or certain business use; thus increasing challenges a data transcriptionist face. What are those obstacles? To elaborate, here are data transcription’s biggest challenges. Data Transcription and Its Biggest Challenges Data transcription services pose challenges that can be classified into (1) workflow, (2) quality control, and (3) technical difficulties. 1. Workflow Workflow, or work funnel, considerably becomes the first and foremost challenge due to diverse individual competencies and teamwork collaboration. To simplify, it consists of individual and collective challenges. Regarding each transcriptionist in a team, it is unlikely that everyone shares the exact same competencies. To some degree, differences affecting their workflow exist. Some examples are the necessary time to do a task or the transcription quality. This, therefore, challenges each individual to adjust to deadlines without discounting service quality. Another challenge is regarding project management, both manual and automatic. Each of them has its own strengths and weaknesses, specifically pertaining to tradeoff. Manual management allows more flexibility. Scheduling can be based on each transcriptionist’s workload. It, however, induces rough task estimation and requires more energy for scheduling. The automatic one, in contrast, puts the start date, duration, and target per day into the digital calculation. This enables a more accurate estimation of the cost of working under tight automated scheduling. Moreover, there is another challenge during this pandemic. As in-house collaboration is strictly limited, telecommuting collaboration may cause communication difficulties that lead to misunderstanding within a team and misinterpretation of what the project is about. Should the problem prevail, such bigger problems as delay may occur. 2. Quality Control Service quality delivery presents challenges for numerous industries ─ transcription is no exception. To get the best quality possible, a transcriptionist has to translate not only the language but also the context. Furthermore, translating context is difficult due to its sub-aspects such as background information, language style, and tone. For example, context translation varies from one field to another. As transcription is not exclusive to certain business sectors, its projects’ coverage is wide. To produce comprehensible transcripts, context must be present and each business sector, topic, and field are dissimilar to one another (compare Banking to Engineering). Ergo, this necessitates transcriptionists to, at least, understand what the document is about. This is to provide clearer or semantically similar information even after the original language has changed. Rework and revision also affect service quality levels. Before a transcript is ready to use, editors will review it. Should a room for improvement exist, either rework or revision is necessary. Rework refers to addition or modification through elaboration for details of the context. Meanwhile, revision is any correction to make a text more understandable. As a result, these processes may cause a longer time to complete a project. 3. Technical Difficulties Technical difficulties also exist in transcription and data entry services. This is for probabilities of software and network failure exist. Oftentimes, the problem is out of the transcriptionists’ control. One of the issues, for instance, is downtime. Today’s transcriptionists mostly utilize an online portal as a submission entry and collaboration playground. In the event of downtime, this portal will be temporarily inaccessible. That might be due to either server or network downtime. Server downtime happens when problems occur in the web server hosting the portal. Whereas, the causes of network downtime are either a device’s failure to detect internet connection or internet unavailability at the range. Another one is pertinent to files. In some cases, a file size is too large, resulting in longer access time. Another common case is due to file quality. Inaudible or low audio quality and overlapping voices are the examples. Additionally, corrupted files also become an obstacle. The last resort is by contacting the customer(s) to inquire about backup files. The Bottom Line of Data Transcription Challenges Data transcription services have three major categories of challenges: (1) workflow, (2) quality control, and (3) technical difficulties. While some challenges such as workflow and quality assurance are controllable, the other, technical difficulties, are not. Despite everything, mitigating the risks of problems resulting in challenges is not far from possible. While a good transcriptionist team strictly follows a plan to finish a job, a better team prepares a backup plan in the event of a worst-case scenario.
Professional Transcription in Business: How It Matters
How Professional Transcription Service Can Help You Maintain and Grow Your Business Businesses have been growing at an immense speed. Dozens of startups have managed to gain acknowledgement globally, earning them the “unicorn” title for their stellar achievements attained in a considerably short time. To develop into a bigger business, it’s not uncommon for businesses to cooperate with other companies. To ensure both companies give each other mutual benefits, there will be a lot of business interactions involved. Presentations and meetings are important parts of the strategy. Another important thing is making sure you have the log of all your discussion. In this specific case, professional transcription service can give your business a big hand of help. Ever heard of a professional transcription service? A professional transcription service helps you log business interactions like meetings, conferences, workshops, presentations, and others. Having trained for years, professional transcriptionists can assure you accuracy in their transcription, even when the speakers have different accents. Apart from that, there are more ways how professional transcription service could help businesses. Professional Transcription: How It Helps Your Business 1. Official documentation, solid evidence to the agreements Having official documents that track your agreement on hands is especially helpful to avoid disputes and lawsuits in the future. Sometimes, your business may face unexpected occurrences that may risk your deal with the other companies. The other party could suddenly insist on a different thing from what was discussed, or even worse, they might ask to cancel the agreement for no exact reason. At these moments, the transcription log can come handy as a solid proof of the discussion. 2. Less trouble with accurate and legitimate transcription A communication gap can lead to a lot of misses: misinformation, miscommunications, even misarticulations. Professional transcriptionists who are trained and experienced in the matter can really help you get away from such problems. With your business interactions logged accurately, you can also go back to the notes to find out what points you missed, or which points to highlight from the meeting. 3. Connecting one part of the world to another Transcription service is not only used for meetings. It is also a helpful tool for marketing, especially on audio and audiovisual contents. Whether it is a promotional video, a TED talk content, interview clip, or other video contents, having the help of transcriptionists can really boost the views. Providing subtitles for such video contents can help the video understood by global audiences. Or, you can also upgrade your video quality by providing translations for more worldwide audience-friendly contents. Note that professional transcriptionists are required to maintain the confidentiality of their work. Hence, you could rest easy on the confidentiality of your business agreements. As much as the deal matters to your business, the professional transcriptionists and their agency’s reputation are also on the line. A lot of businesses have been considering the needs of professional transcription service. In fact, there has been a significant rise in professional transcription demand. With the rise in demand, businesses are also served with a wide variety of options. But, how do we choose the best professional transcription service for our business? Professional Transcription Service for Your Business: Things to Consider The first step you need to do is to determine the language for the service. Don’t ask professional transcriptionists that master in English to transcribe your meeting that is spoken mostly in Korean! Next, always try to check out the error rates for the service you choose. When it comes to transcription, one important thing to note is the error rates. Obviously, the smaller the error rates, the better it is. While looking for available transcription services, you might find some offers that utilize AI. At a glance, choosing AI for transcription might sound like the best option. Hold your horses!, because in the transcription field, advanced technology can’t really guarantee accuracy. Wired reported in 2016 that certain research calculated a 4% error rate from professional transcriptionists. Meanwhile, advanced technology only managed to press its error rate to 8% with the same audio. Moreover, Stolcke & Droppo (2017) attested advanced technology is still puzzled to differentiate the filled pauses (“uh”) from backchannel acknowledgments (“uhhuh”). How did this happen? Simple, technology can’t think logically as humans do. Humans can use their logic to guess on inaudible audio, something that AI can’t do. Furthermore, while humans can differentiate accents, dialects, missing words (either due to an error in the audio or the speaker got cut while speaking), technology can’t. Humans are also still capable of grasping what is spoken in overlapping audio to some extent. The transcriptionist can read the speakers’ lips or gestures to write down the exact word they are talking about. Once you’ve narrowed down the list, all it takes are to proceed with the last step. Settle on the agency that suits your budget the best. Don’t forget to check on the offered services. Do they comply with your needs? Different services might offer different additional services with similar rates. Some of them could be really helpful, but some others could be a waste of money. Don’t rush yourself in choosing a professional transcription service, especially when it’s still your first time. Take your time to understand every detail offered. If necessary, try various options too. Finding a transcription service that suits your business the best may take time. However, it could give a handful of help for your business, more so if you are aiming at the global market.