Different types of online transcription services

Online transcription services come in a wide variety of forms and provide products that differ in turnaround times, price, quality, and customer service. In this article, we will look at the most common templates for online transcription services. Hopefully, this small but useful literature will help anyone looking to transcribe their audio and ensure that an amazing transcript gets into their hands!  academic transcription services

In the world of online transcription services, there are many, many options offered by each different business; It is a good idea to consider these factors when purchasing your transcript online. While there is a wide range of different types of transcription companies, each generally falls into one of the following categories.

Multi-source online transcription services 

Crowdsourced online transcription services have become very popular recently! This service requires your audio to be released into the public domain for transcription by transcribers from multiple sources. Simply put, transcription companies can greatly reduce costs by cutting audio into small pieces (usually 1-5 minutes) and broadcasting it to many different people for transcription. Once each person has completed their portion of the transcript, a computer program collects the small fragments, puts them back together, and returns them to you. This is actually a very sophisticated program and a clever method for transcribing large amounts of material; however, the customer loses privacy and quality: 

1. Your audio is public: anyone can listen to it (anyone can and anyone can, because hundreds of transcribers have to check if they can accept the work by listening to it) 

2. Transcribers often have slightly different styles, so punctuation, spelling and grammar, etc. differs between sections of the same final transcript 

3. You don't know who your transcribers are! For example, transcribers do not normally need to be native English speakers; problems are mostly avoidable with good training and experience, but at some point the language barrier will appear in the final transcript 

4. There is no confidentiality agreement with the transcribers regarding your audio files. 

5. Delivery times can sometimes be several months which is fine as long as you are aware of it from the start. 

Outsourced transcription services 

In this service model, a transcription company will be a single person, business or company and when it receives an order from you, it will simply deliver it to an outsourced company (in India, Philippines or another country) for completion. Don't get me wrong: these services can provide a certain level of quality for transcripts that have very basic audio (no background noise, more than one speaker, technical terms, etc.). BUT! They simply can't deliver any kind of quality on more demanding audio. In the tests my friends and I ran (which I won't post here; you'll have to take my word for it), the transcript we received from some of these outsourced companies didn't match the audio even slightly. Outsourcing companies go to great lengths to provide quality transcripts, but not having English as your first language means you simply can't deliver transcripts with 98% accuracy or better. Some problems with outsourced online transcription companies: 

1. Not simple audio = low quality transcripts 

Two. Consistent difficulty with names, technical terms, anything that requires research, etc.

3. Poor customer service and support overall. The company receiving your money is not the company doing the transcripts. This means that the client is asking questions of someone who isn't actually transcribing their material. The result? Confusion, annoyance and waste of time.