Why is Business Transcription Service Important

Technology has transformed how people communicate with one another, especially in business settings. Today, businesses convey their messages and objectives and interact with their stakeholders through different audio and video mediums, such as conference calls and webinars. While businesses are required to keep an accurate account of their communications for commercial and legal purposes, traditional note-taking practices we relied in the past may no longer be sufficient. This is how business transcription services come into play.

What are the types of transcription services?

There are two common types of transcription, and each has its positives and negatives. Your choice on transcription service type largely depends on the purpose of your content.

Verbatim transcription: This type of transcription is the direct written form of spoken language converted from audio and video files. Involving every sound uttered by the speakers, it can include gap fillers such as “uh”, “ah” and throat clearing. It also indicates when noises occur, such as phone ringing.

Edited transcription: The transcriber decides which words to retain and edits out distracting fillers and repetitions, to provide a clearer, more concise and readable transcript. Examples of the ways of editing transcription include:

• Delete filler words: Unnecessary words such as “you know” and “like” are removed.
• Omit repeating words or sentences: Words and sentences that are unintentionally repeated, such as stuttering, are deleted in edited transcriptions.
• Eliminate pauses and general noises: Anything that is irrelevant to the main speakers or the topic of the audios/videos can be omitted, including background noises and coughing.

Here’s how two sentences would be transcribed in verbatim and edited form:

Verbatim: Yeah, so I met Jane yesterday and um… she seemed, like, very tired. So yeah, she must, well, she must have been working very hard lately or something…yeah, I guess.

Edited: I met Jane yesterday and she seemed very tired. She must have been working very hard lately.

When do businesses need transcription services?

But when do businesses need transcription services? Some may think that transcription is only needed in very special situations, for example in legal proceedings. However, businesses of all kinds can also rely on transcription for a range of everyday tasks!

• Business meetings: If you need a written account of what was discussed in meetings, transcription is what you need.
• Subtitling: Transcription is the answer when you want your videos more accessible to your target audiences.
• Interviews: Interviews conducted in market research can be transcribed for publication.

Advantages of professional transcription services

Many businesses assign their staff members as in-house transcriptionists, hoping this could save the cost of engaging linguists. However, the process of converting audio files into text format can be more time- consuming than you have ever imagined, especially when your staff do not have the expertise or experience for the job. So why not engage a professional translation house to deal with it so your employees can be deployed in core business activities and or other major tasks instead?

There are always evident differences between professional and amateur transcription. Professional transcriptionists achieve higher levels of accuracy as they adhere to rigorous quality standards and are accustomed to transcribing a variety of accents and pronunciations.