Google defines ‘Myth’ as a widely held but false belief or idea. In simple words, a false belief/opinion which is different from the reality/fact is Myth. Similarly, there are a lot of myths floating around about transcription & transcriptionist. There are numerous myths about transcription and we’ll discuss a few of them.
1. Transcription is all about typing:
Often people think, being good at typing is all we need for transcription but the fact is Transcription needs good listening skills, ability to identify each speaker when there are multiple speakers in the audio, knowledge of different accents, local language, familiarity with the subject matter and patience to spend enough time just to decipher what is being said. In short an excellent professional with relevant skills can be the transcriptionist.
2. Transcription time is the same as the duration of an audio:
Most of us think, Transcription time is the same as the length of an audio but the fact is, transcription involves research, grammar check, editing, proofreading and transcription time is higher than the time of audio as sometimes it also has multiple speakers with different accents and overlapping voices. It takes more time to check the accuracy of the transcript and especially if the transcriptionist is an amateur.
3. An App is all we need:
There are apps available for almost everything & that is what develops another myth – an app can fulfill the requirement of a transcriptionist. The fact is an app has certain restrictions like it would accept only those audio formats that it is designed for; it cannot differentiate between various accents and thus for error-free, accurate transcript we require a professional transcriptionist who would transcribe an audio recorded in any format, spend hours discerning accents, editing wherever necessary and proofreading the transcript as well.
After all this discussion, we understand, like any other job/service Transcription requires specific skill-set, hard work and ability to perform under pressure.