Audio Transcription – An Essential for Accessibility

How speech technology will help your company keep track of your next meeting, conference, or business call

With our professional transcriptionists and our Artificial Intelligence-enhanced automated transcription tool (CPSL Transcript), we provide fast and accurate transcriptions of any audiovisual content you need.

What is Transcription?

Whenever a written version of an audio or video file exists, you can be certain that it is the work of a transcriptionist. Transcription helps us to transform speech, sound, or sign language into readable text using transcription software and speech technologies. Transcription makes the source material easier to understand and faster to grasp. Given that there is always a demand to make content available to as many people as possible, transcription becomes a tool to aid in disseminating information. Technology helps us to use our time more wisely and dedicate it to added-value tasks, while machines work for us.

There are three main styles of transcription, depending on the final purpose of the transcribed data:

1. Clean read transcription

This style (also known as “clean verbatim” transcription) focusses on clean and readable text for professional and academic contexts, such as business communication, academic research, seminars, or presentations. Unless stated otherwise, a clean read transcription will contain no details that are irrelevant to the content of the audio file, while still retaining the meaning of the sentence. Therefore, slang, interruptions, false starts, etc. are left out.

Example:

Audio: I, I’m, er [pause] wh, what was the question again [laughing]?
Transcription: What was the question again?

2. Smooth verbatim transcription

For purposes that are focused on transmitting the actual content of the source material, rather than on cleanliness, the smooth verbatim option is a good fit. Audio is transcribed word-for-word, while removing filler and non-words like “um”, “hmm”, “uh-huh”, and interviewer responses like “OK” or “I see”. This style is ideal for interviews because it relays what’s being said throughout the recording, without cluttering the text with unnecessary detail.

Example:

Audio: I, I’m, er [pause] wh, what was the question again [laughing]?
Transcription : I, I’m [pause] wh- what was the question again [laughing]?

3. Strict verbatim transcription

If there is a need for a detailed transcription of each word, sound, or non-verbal communication, the required style would be strict verbatim. Here every sound is interpreted and transcribed, thereby providing an accurate, 1:1 account of the content in the recording. This transcription style is used mainly in the legal context, where the way in which a person says something is as important as what is being said. The transcription will include every utterance, false starts, noise, etc.

Why is transcription important in our society?

Information is moving at ever-higher speeds, thereby making it necessary to be able to grasp and process content at an increasingly faster pace. At the same time, the average attention span seems to be decreasing. If a video does not grab the viewer’s attention within the first three seconds, it is highly unlikely that they will watch it any further.

Subtitling, transcription, translation, and voice-over of various types of media, needed for your company such as meetings, conferences, telephone calls, recordings, interviews, and podcasts, help to convey information in the most upfront way possible, making it unnecessary to turn on the audio: it is the most efficient way to relay information.

Apart from the aspect of clarity, there is another reason why transcription is relevant in our society: accessibility. According to a study by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communicational Disorders in 2011-2012, 14% of adults aged 20 to 69 in the US alone suffered from hearing loss. While it is not a critical disability, deafness prevents affected persons from accessing information that is presented only in audio form, such as discussions, lectures, or broadcasts that are not transcribed. But thanks to transcription and subtitling, the pool of accessible knowledge, such as eLearning for people with hearing-disabilities, is growing and paving the way for a world in which they have better opportunities.

Why is transcription important for your business?

As a globalized and inclusive business, you’ll want to reach as many customers, partners, and employees as possible. By transcribing and localizing business media, such as conferences, podcasts, and training videos, you can ensure that they are accessible by and clear to consumers in any language.

This effectively increases the reach of your business and, in turn, causes your business opportunities to grow around the globe.

Automated Solutions – The future of transcription?

Due to the development of Artificial Intelligence through Machine-Learning, applications are becoming increasingly sophisticated at interpreting and parsing patterns such as speech. You can already see the advancements through technologies such as automatic subtitling for videos. While exciting, these programs are not yet refined enough to handle every quality of video. Fast speech with multiple speakers talking over each other, in addition to loud background noise and bad video quality, makes automatic transcription prone to errors. Closed captions are similarly difficult to generate, since noise cannot be categorized because the program is unable to make out a clear pattern.

Professional transcriptionists usually employ both manual work and automated systems. First, a rough draft is produced by automated transcription software, which is then manually edited and refined. Our automated transcription tool (CPSL Transcript) uses artificial intelligence for speech-to-text conversion. The resulting automated transcription, which is usually ready within minutes, is sent to a professional transcriptionist for review, depending on the quality standard required by the customer (unedited or edited automatic transcription).

This saves time and leads to a good balance between quality* and quantity

*Regarding to our commitment to ensuring the security, confidentiality, and integrity of your data, we have earned our fourth certification, the ISO 27001 information security standard.

There are many cases (with different types of content) in which a trusted language partner like CPSL is advisable for delivering accurate and edited transcription output: