Back in college, I spent a summer doing interview transcriptions for one of the grad students I’d been working with all year. It was a pretty good arrangement because I got to listen to a bunch of interviews related to how the real world of my major worked and also got really easy credits.
The downside is it literally took me all summer on top of my full-time job. Since most of us don’t have access to college students looking for an easy A, here are five reasons transcription services might make your life easier.
Faster. You know how when you are doing something unfamiliar, it always takes a little while before you get the hang of it? This is definitely true for transcription. Experienced people can accurately hold more in their memory at a time which means less rewinding to the exact spot to hear the sentence again. The other bonus is this neat pedal many transcription professionals use to quickly rewind five seconds rather than try to adjust the slider where you always end up in the wrong place.
Cheaper. You can do this yourself or have a staff member take care of it, but then it takes away from other (probably more important or urgent) tasks that need to get accomplished.
More accurate. What’s the point if your text file isn’t accurate? When you hire someone to do this, their entire job is accuracy. Good enough is not good enough in transcription. It has to be perfect.
You can’t CTRL+F an audio or video file. Someday there will be an app for this. Until then, the text is easier. If you have seen an app for this, please let me know.
Clear Records. Transcriptions give you a quick and easy way to record meetings and return to important points of the contest to clarify events.
