Wednesday, January 26, 2011

What is Verbatim Transcription?

Documentation is always involved in much of the manual tasks in business processes. Audio and video recordings need written counterparts as documentation. Documentation requires transcription of spoken sources. Transcription involves the conversion of an audio or video recording into written text using a computer to create a document file, either for general or archival purposes. One of the types of transcription is verbatim transcription.
Verbatim Interview Transcription is one of the types of transcription wherein every utterance of the audio is transcribed. This includes uhs, ums, stutters, false starts, distracting speech patterns such as, "right" and "yeah" and repetition and remarks such as, "you know", "like" which are not important to a non verbatim transcript. It also includes pauses, laughter, coughing or any other human noise and external noise such as background noises. Verbatim transcription takes longer to transcribe because there are more characters to type. Most transcription clients don't want verbatim transcription because it's more difficult to transcribe and more difficult to read.
These types of transcripts are often required for interviews by universities for qualitative analysis and for interviews given in evidence for legal purposes as explained below:
1.Notes of meetings - this is widely used by secretaries of companies. Vital agendas and topics are discussed in business meetings, thus, meeting transcription is an integral part of business. Secretarial activity at important business meetings can be divided in two areas. Taking minutes of business meetings and then transcribing it. However, with today's high rate of evolution in business processes, secretaries have more important task to do than transcribe these meetings. So what companies are doing now is that they are recording their meetings and using a service company to transcribe it for them in verbatim.
2.Press conferences - these are typically held on important occasions and the information imparted in the course of the press conference is often critical information to a certain community. There is therefore an urgent need for the transcription of audio or video recordings of a press conference.
3.Legal work - Legal transcription is a vital service. Like medical transcription, the quality of legal transcripts can affect an individual's well-being. For businesses, litigation is an area of growing concern, and premium-quality legal transcription can greatly enhance a business's operation.
4.Thesis and Dissertation - this is widely used for students seeking for professional growth. Most of these transcripts are non-verbatim although there are also a number of students who require verbatim transcription service.
5.Webinars - online presentations mostly require verbatim transcription service although there are other businesses who would like to go for semi-verbatim where the fillers, stutters and false starts are eliminated and all other utterances are to be transcribed.
6.Investigations - this may include criminal reports, prison investigations, insurance investigation and investigations at crime scenes or accident/injury scenes. All of these directly relates to legal transcription.

The main idea of verbatim transcription is to capture both the "what" and "how" of speech. However, it will always depend on your clients. Not everyone requires the same level of detail. There are instances wherein your client would want you to note some non-verbal communication but don't want to include external sounds or events in the transcript. Others may want you to use intelligent verbatim technique wherein you cut out redundant words and phrases and transcribe everything else. It's always a good idea to thoroughly discuss the specific requirements with your client before beginning a transcription project so that you know exactly what to transcribe and what to leave out.

About the Author
For more Transcribing Service visit Dissertation Transcription at Etranscriber Transcriptions.
Source: http://goarticles.com/

1 comment:

alfred said...

The audio transcription was the key that did the trick, along with the spoken keywords in the video, the transcript which was posted along with the video clippings was indexed by the search engine Google, the product keywords provided the video presentation a search engine advantage, the online shoppers after watching the video clippings and the highlights of the products, responded in kind.

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