Sunday 8 March 2015

Audio Transcription Service - another 1st Class self-promotion!

As many of you who view these inane ramblings may be aware, 1st Class Media is a sister company to 1st Class Secretarial Services, both part of Lawson Hardwick Limited. My wife runs the Secretarial Services providing an audio transcription service to a wide number of organisations throughout the UK.


Audio Transcription is one of those specialist services which we all think is pretty easy to get done, we record something, a conversation, an interview or something else (see below) and it can seamlessly be typed up by someone who can touch type in next to no time.


Pah! (collectively the team yells in my ear) Actually, (and now speaks the educated voice of hearing what is involved) it turns out to be a somewhat more convoluted than that. If you have ever tried to transcribe yourself you realise quite quickly that ("hold on, this is taking bloody ages") that this 15 minute phone call has already taken me an hour to stop and listen, type (badly) and then continue. As a rule of thumb it takes 4-6 hours to type up a single hour of audio recording, and it doesn't stop there - it also depends on the quality of recording (aside: who the hell records a letter underneath a railway announcement tannoy speaker, oh I know, our clients, that's who!), the number of speakers (especially if it's a lively debate with animated speakers and counter-speakers, sometimes silly grins appear on transcriptionists faces as they type, we smile and nod, no other words need to be said - yes, we know) or the dialects. Believe me we've had a fair share of inquiries which have had broad Brummie accents speaking at 200 miles an hour all of which was recorded on a handheld recorder about 12 metres away in the corner of a meeting room ("what do you mean the quality's non too good??")


So, that probably enough for now, shameless self-promotion aside, spare a thought for the hard-working members of our team who turn around audio recording transcription, we do our best but sometimes it can be a challenge!!

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