When you search for the word ‘transcription services’ on the internet, you will end up with hundreds of results from search engines. If you narrow down your search and focus on specialist services such as conference or interview transcribing, you will still get a wide range results. So, how do you choose a reliable transcription service?
These are several factors that should be considered when determining the best transcription services to contact. Price should not be the only consideration. A service provider’s answers to all your questions will clearly indicate if they offer the best services. Here are some of the things to consider when looking for transcription services.
Do they have skilled and experienced transcribers?
Reputable transcription services should have a team of skilled and qualified transcribers. In most cases, transcription companies take large projects with short turnaround time. If they are short of transcribers, they may not deliver the projects on time or worst still, clients may risk of poor quality transcription. This is because less time will be allocated to every client’s work. When delegating your transcription work to professional services, the output quality should never be compromised with. The transcribers should, therefore, take up projects that they can comfortably handle and finish within the stipulated time.
Who transcribes the documents?
Only skilled and experienced transcribers are able to offer quality transcription. Remember that transcription is not an ideal job for an audio transcriber with only a few months’ experience. A reliable transcriber is one who has language skills, outstanding grammar, proofreading ability and uttermost accuracy, and most importantly, the ability to identify inconsistencies, notice contextual errors and be able to think out of the box. Also, they should be able to grasp different dialects and accents, and a interpret voice inflections without changing the meaning of the original audio.
Determining the standard of outsourced transcriber.
This is a very important factor to ensure that you get nothing but the quality transcription for your audios. Transcribing work has to be delegated to professionals who can listen and fluently communicate in the language. For instance, if the recording is in English, then the transcriber is expected to be a native English speaker. French recordings should also be handled by French native speakers and so on. This is the only way you can be guaranteed the best transcription services from the providers.
A client should consider whether or not the standard of services provided by overseas companies can achieve the same quality offered by native speakers. It can be challenging to transcribe difficult dialects, accents and slang words which differs from one nation to another. So as much as individuals from oversees can also transcribe, you will be guaranteed of better services if a native handles the job instead.
When looking for transcribing services, the above questions will ensure that you get the services you really deserve. Remember that poor transcription can end up distorting the original meaning of the document and this is the last thing you can expect from professional transcribing services.
