What exactly is transcription?
Generally, what transcription means is to convert an audio or a video file into text format. However, transcription process involves much more than that. It entirely depends on the client’s needs and the client’s needs is dependent on how the transcription is going to be used.

What is transcription for?
Transcription is used in wide range of industries and in various professional and academic contexts as well. Where there are long hours of audio data, transcription of that data is equally lengthy. Many professionals, from lawyers to doctors to marketing teams and HR professionals make use of the transcription services. In today’s data driven world, transcription becomes essential.

How one gets the transcription?
Recording the audio is a great way to capture the data effortlessly. But, the problem with the audio data is the listener faces the problem to get the specific data from the audio. The listener has to go back and forth, rewind, pause and play it over and over again to find a particular data from the audio. Transcription makes the data more easily accessible and searchable. In simple words, transcription deals with transcribing the data from audio or video files and converting them into the written digital form of text. Although this is the fundamental nature of transcription, there are varieties of data transcription types.

Types of Transcription
There are variations in the way one transcribes an audio or video file. The variations totally depend on the context of the data and preferences of the client. Different services have different names for them, but the common ones are as listed below:

  • Verbatim – In this form, the audio or video data is transcribed in a completely unaltered form. What this means is not only word to word utterances will be transcribed, it will also include any nuances of speech like “ummm,” “uh,” “aah,” false starts, stutters etc.
  • Clean or Intelligent – Edited transcriptions are when the transcriber can omit the parts of the audio or video data as long as the meaning of the recording does not change. Even any nuances of speech like “ummm,” “uh,” “aah,” false starts, stutters etc. will be removed from the transcription.
  • Notes – Here the transcriber will remove any data which is off-topic and condense the data down to a series of notes. Sometimes it will be detailed notes and sometimes these are bullet points, based on the client’s requirements.
  • Subtitles – Any video production needs subtitles for more accessibility. Subtitles usually start with full transcription of the video file and then it will be converted in to SRT file.

Who uses Transcripts?
Many industries and individuals find the Transcriptions useful. Especially, where the data is recorded in audio or video format, transcription becomes essential. Some use cases are:

  • Legal industries using transcription for court hearings
  • Medical professionals using the transcription services for recording patient’s data
  • HR professionals using this service record the employee interviews
  • Video production houses requiring a production script for an unscripted program

And many more.