What is Transcription & How We Do It Differently

On a low level, it is taking an audio or video file and effectively translating it into the written word.

Certain businesses record meetings, interviews etc and want them transcribed to written hard copy.

What makes our transcription service different is a few things.

I was trained by the federal government as a transcriptionist to provide verbatim documents to be used for court purposes. Verbatim transcripts include every mmm-hmm and um or ah. If someone cries, coughs or laughs, it is captured in the document.

Because of my training, I have trained all of the transcriptionists on my team in the same manner. We have created processes to maintain consistency across all of our documents. That way, regardless of the person that is completing the transcript, it will look exactly the same as if someone else on the team has completed it.

For example, we have in-depth discussions and team meetings to decide how different words are written. For example, time:

• Twelve o-clock
• 12 o’clock
• 12:00

Does the time change regardless of which way it is written? Not at all. However, when documents leave our organization to go back to the client, they are all consistently the same.

The same font, size, headers and footers. Completely customizable for the client, of course.

The small details matter.

We are a Canadian company. Why is this relevant? Many other transcription companies have software that completes the transcripts or employs people outside of Canada. Common words in Canada like, “Saskatchewan” or “toque” would most definitely be spelled incorrectly, not to mention that there is no “thought” to the storyline of the transcript. And that is really what we are doing with transcription… telling the story.

A “bot” or inexperienced transcriptionist might hear “The guy came to the party with a bag of earrings”. What was actually said was, “The guy came to the party with a box of whisky.” That is just one example of how we are different. Our transcriptionists are listening to the story, and know that at first listen, even if what they heard was “a bag of earrings”, that doesn’t make sense to the story. They will slow the audio down and re-listen, and at the very least, will add in a timestamp to the transcript with [unintelligible] so the client can skip to that part of the tape and listen for themselves.

Another way we are different is that each transcript gets a second review. So we don’t just type it and send it back. After the first round, the transcriptionist or the reviewer will re-listen to the entire recording again and follow along on their document, word by word to catch anything they missed the first time.

Prior to one of our clients coming on board with us, they were using a popular transcription service that was priced lower. In one transcript they received back from this company, the name “Twyla” was spelled 5 different ways. I didn’t even know that name could be spelled five different ways!

So yes, we charge premium rates. Because we deliver premium transcripts. We do not offer overnight services and our turnaround time is a little longer than other companies in the market. Our transcriptionists are the highest quality in Canada and take pride in every single transcript they hand back to us to present to our clients. They all take pride in the work they do, and they get paid for their expertise.

If you are okay with low-quality, inconsistent documents representing your company – you have lots of options in the market.

If you are looking for top-quality transcription, look no further than Northern Primrose Consulting.