Important information:
You may have been conducting research interviews, focus groups, market research, but whatever your reason for recording conversations you'll be looking for an affordable transcription service. There are many transcription services available but sometimes an affordable transcription service can seem hard to find. Transcription is not cheap, because it is a lot more involved than copy typing, but that doesn't mean you can't find an affordable transcription service, and by providing good quality recordings you can make the transcription more affordable, as it will take less time to complete.
You may have planned to do the transcription yourself, but if you are not a fast touch-typist and do not have specialist transcription equipment then you have probably now realised that it's going to take you a very long time. I have had clients come to me saying it was taking them 20 hours to produce a transcript of a 1-hour recording. That's why they ended up using a transcription service!
The most important thing to remember is that it's just not possible to type as fast as you speak. Even an experienced transcriptionist will be able to average four times as long for a good, clear one-to-one interview - so an hour of recording will take an average of four hours to transcribe. A focus group may take six hours or more per hour of recording. (Industry standards obtained from the Industry Production Standards Guide (1998), published by OBC, Columbus, OH, USA) Transcriptionists also have to make sense of what's being said, punctuate the speech correctly and use the right homophones (words like there/their/they're that sound the same but are spelt differently.)
So how can you make sure that your transcript is clear, in order to get an affordable transcription price? Basically, the easier you make the transcription for the transcriptionist, the more likely they are to be able to give you an affordable transcription quote.
First of all, use the best recording equipment you can afford, and make sure it's fit for purpose. This means that for interviews you should record with an external microphone rather than one built into the recorder, which is only designed to pick up one voice dictating. For focus groups you should have several microphones so that all participants are close to a mike.
If you're conducting interviews then, if at all possible, conduct them in a quiet room, as background noise will dramatically increase the time taken to transcribe the recording, as the transcriptionist may have to listen to sections several times in order to capture the interview speech. It is helpful to spell out your interviewee's name at the beginning of the tape, before starting the interview, and speak out any information you would like on the transcript header e.g. the date, the job title of your interviewee etc. You may also want to conduct a 'debrief' session at the end of the recording, when you are alone, in order to quickly record your impressions of the interview. For research interviews this is often part of the methodology.
Focus group transcription will cost more than a one-to-one interview transcript, but you can still get an affordable transcription service if you work to make your recording as clear as possible. Again make sure the recording is conducted in a private quiet room. Air conditioning can affect a recording, but so can opening a window, so if it's a hot day it's worth making a couple of test recordings before you start to see if there are problems! It's really important to firmly chair a focus group too. Remind all the participants that all their views are valid, there are no rights and wrongs and, while you're interested to see if they agree or disagree with each other, they should try not to talk (or shout!) over each other to make their point. Saying this at the beginning is important but it's even more important, if you want affordable transcription, to remind participants each time things start getting a bit 'out of hand' that they need to speak separately for the sake of the recording. Finding the balance here between letting the talk flow and making sure you get a good recording is quite an art!
Conference recording is best left to the professionals if possible! Often these days a venue will provide recording facilities of good quality, included in the price. A microphone needs to be set up for the speaker and there should also be people in the audience with 'roving' microphones to take around to any audience members wanting to ask a question.
Digital recording systems provide the best quality and many transcriptionists only work with digital now, so if you want to give yourself the widest field then it's certainly worth considering digital.
Any information you can provide to the transcriptionist about your recording will help, and may help toward an affordable transcription service. For example a list of key words will reduce the time spent 'Googleing', searching the internet to find out how to spell technical terms, names of organisations etc. If you can provide this info it certainly saves time, and saving time saves you money, again reaching toward that goal of an affordable transcription service. Technical work will always be more expensive than non-technical, but providing a 'crib sheet' of key words should reduce the cost.
Most transcriptionists work in a standard format, whether that be tabular, tabbed, interviews shown as initials or full names etc. Again most are happy to work to your specifications, but the standard format might well be cheaper, so think carefully about whether you need something different or not. Find out what the standard format is in advance if it concerns you, and you may be able to adapt it to your needs. If, for instance, it's essential that you have speakers in different fonts or different colours, this will add to the price. It might be more cost-effective for you to put this in when the basic transcript is returned to you!
Finally, give some serious thought to whether or not you need a verbatim transcription. Verbatim transcription includes every repeated word, every 'um' and 'erm', all those 'filler' phrases like 'you know' and 'know what I mean' that may be repeated a hundred times in one interview, and can also include pauses, coughs, throat clearing etc. if required. Needless to say, this takes longer. If the transcriptionist can filter out all this stuff the transcript is quicker. In my company the cheapest level is what we call 'intelligent verbatim' which cuts out all these fillers but leaves the rest exactly as it's spoken. Different transcriptionists work this differently though, so always check when you're phoning for your quote. Here are some brief examples. Somewhat more expensive is edited, which corrects the grammar and any mispronounced words as well as knocking out all the fillers.
Verbatim
So, anyway, you know, I said, er, 'Well, Susan, I really think you, you shouldn't be um asking, er, me that.' And she, erm, er, she, she, well, she said, 'Look Mark, I dunno what you mean,' know what I mean?
Intelligent Verbatim
So anyway I said, 'Well, Susan, I really think you shouldn't be asking me that.' And she said, 'Look Mark, I dunno what you mean.'
Edited
So I said, 'Well, Susan, I really think you shouldn't be asking me that.' And she said, 'Look Mark, I don't know what you mean.'
You can see that a whole extra line of typing is required for the verbatim work in just those two sentences.
There are occasions when verbatim is required - depending on your topic it might be required for legal reasons, or you might be studying the language itself and the way it's used. But if you really don't need it, don't end up paying for it!
There are many excellent reasons for interviewing groups of people, but don't do this in order to try to reduce the transcription cost! As already stated, it takes much longer to transcribe a group of more than two or three people (including the moderator/interviewer) because of the time taken to distinguish the different voices and the fact that people will inevitably talk over each other, especially when they get excited, enthusiastic, impassioned or angry.
And finally, remember that the cheapest transcription quote might not be the most affordable one in the end. There is an oft-quoted phrase: if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Will it really be cost-effective to send your hard-won interviews to the cheapest service if what comes back is gobbledygook and you have to go through the whole thing correcting every other word? How much time will you then waste that could have been spent more productively on your core business?
TO SUMMARISE : WHAT INFLUENCES TRANSCRIPTION TIMES?
It's in the interests of both the transcriber and the client to deal with recordings of the highest possible quality. No transcriber enjoys working with poor quality recordings, and why invest time, money and effort arranging an event only to scupper it at the recording stage? A poor recording will result in a high number of 'inaudibles' and take far longer to transcribe and will increase client costs. Producing a good quality, clearly audible recording is vital. If we can't hear it, we can't transcribe it! The less time it takes to transcribe your material, the lower your final costs will be. The choice of recording equipment and the facilitation of the event has as much impact as the efficiency of the transcriber.
It may also be useful to understand what factors influence how long a transcription will take to process.
The format and quality of the recording
Digital and minidisc recordings will always produce a clearer recording than any analogue format such as standard audio tapes, mini tapes or micro cassettes. Please see our comparison of digital and analogue recordings. The use of a cheap recorder will be a false economy as the extra transcription costs involved far outweigh any savings made on the equipment.
Whether an external microphone is used
If the in-built microphone is used to make a recording of anything other than dictation, the results will be very poor. External microphones are essential for capturing a clearly audible recording. The position of the microphone is also key. If it's too far away from the speaker (or speakers), much will be inaudible. If there's only one microphone for a group discussion, this will clearly record only the nearest speaker's voice. Microphones are now relatively inexpensive and you will recoup the price several times over in reduced transcription costs.
The clarity and number of voices
If the speaker's voice is hard to hear either because the speaker is too far away from the microphone, mumbles, speaks too fast or too quietly, this can mean it's difficult to decipher the words. With recordings of focus groups, meetings or roundtable discussions, transcription can be more difficult due to the multiple voices involved. Obviously, each voice has a different tone, pitch, and speed as well as accent. People in groups have a tendency to all speak at once, interrupt each other or raise their voices if they become animated. Distinguishing between different voices will always take longer than a one-to-one or single voice situation, because the recording has to be played back several times in order to distinguish the different voices.
Whether you require speakers to be identified
With recordings of one-to-one interviews or small groups, identification of the speakers by name is usually fairly trouble free. With large focus groups or meetings where there may be a 'babble' of voices, this becomes more difficult - especially if the transcriber has never heard those voices before, which is the likely scenario. Unless clients provide a voice 'brief' or speakers identify themselves, either at the beginning or throughout the recording, it becomes almost impossible to match names to voices and takes much longer because the transcriber has to 'tune in' to the different voices.
The speed at which they are talking
It may sound odd but if someone is a fast talker, it will take longer to transcribe what they're saying than for someone who speaks more slowly. For example, take two recordings - both one hour in length. The first interviewee talks slowly, 'normally' - the resulting transcription is perhaps 10,000 words long. The second interviewee talks at 'machine gun' speed and the transcript totals 16,000 words. Same length of recording - completely different length of transcript. A fast talker equals more words. More words equals more to type, which in turns equals more time taken.
Whether they speak in coherent sentences
Everyday speech is usually littered with verbal habits and quirks which we generally don't 'hear' in conversation. People switch thought in mid-sentence, add unnecessary 'you knows' and 'sort ofs' every few words, or sometimes don't speak in coherent sentences at all. We rarely speak in the same way as we write. In such situations, the transcriber must go back and work out where to insert the punctuation so as not to lose the thread of the whole piece. The more coherent the speakers are, the less time it takes to transcribe their words. The transcriber can 'type as they talk' and rarely needs to go back and puzzle out the meaning.
The level of background noise
Background noise can make or break a recording, so choosing the recording location is vital, preferably a quiet indoor environment. Our ears can filter out most of the extraneous noise which is constantly around us, from traffic noise, equipment interference, other voices, even background hiss from the recorder itself. Microphones are not so selective - they pick up every sound, giving each noise equal prominence (unless using noise cancelling microphones).
The degree of regional accents
Wherever a recording is made in the world, if the speaker has an accent which is difficult to understand, this will adversely affect the time it takes to transcribe the recording. Some accents are easier to decipher than others, but it will still take the transcriber time to 'tune their ears in' and necessitate listening several times in order to capture what is being said.
The amount of industry specific or technical terminology involved
Material which is full of technical, financial or specialised terminology may be unfamiliar to the transcriptionist. It may be necessary to relisten to words, sentences, or even whole sections several times in order to distinguish the words. In such circumstances, it helps enormously if a glossary of keywords or some kind of brief about the topic involved can be provided in advance by the client, or if words can be spelt out at the time by the person dictating. We can do this research ourselves on the Internet but this all adds to the transcription time.
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