Interview transcription is the audio recording of one person interviewing another. The interview can take place in person or over the phone and can be an interview of one or more people. Interviews are conducted in every sphere of human activity these days, either as a means of evaluation or as a means to circulate information.
Interviews may vary; it may be between a policeman and a criminal, an employer and an employee. Basically it is an interaction between two or more people.
Transcription is a powerful act of representation. Transcribing interviews requires a great amount of attention to details. How words are pronounced and then represented as text is complicated. Difficulties can occur when participants and interviewer mispronounce words, use slang or change diction.
People always wonder why anyone needs a transcript of an interview as the audio is already available. For example, a doctoral student who has 20 hours of recorded audio of his research material on his studies; a transcriber edits the irrelevant portions and formats the transcript to 10 pages only. Rather than listening to 20 hours of audio, it is much easier to read only 10 pages-all credit goes to transcription.
Interview transcription is used by many sectors in today’s fastest growing industry. Types of interview transcription
- Student research interview transcription
- Job interview transcription
- Journalist interview transcription
- Radio interview transcription
- Police station interview transcription
Authors often have to interview subjects for their books or articles. In this case, you will be identifying the author/speaker and the interviewee, often by name. Interview transcriptions are valuable for universities, students, researchers, police and recruiters.
Some corporate marketing departments conduct one-on-one telephone interview surveys with customers about newly released products they've had the opportunity to use. Often in this setting you will only need to identify the speakers as Interviewer and Customer.
The audio quality of this type of transcription varies greatly depending on the interviewer and their knowledge of recording equipment or their choice of venues from which to record.
While most people who conduct interviews know ahead of time that their audio needs to be listened to by a transcriber, and will do everything possible to provide good clear audio content, some people are just too new to the concept.
For transcribing the interview recording, it is important to use the best quality digital recorder so that the transcribing company can put their best efforts in producing a good quality interview transcription. Digital recording provides excellent sound quality which saves time while transcribing. While recording, turn off everything which produces noise like TVs, clock, refrigerator etc.
For telephone interviews, use a telephone recording device with the capacity to record both sides of the conversation. Avid using speaker phones if possible.
Mainly there are three basic forms of interview transcription.
- Verbatim transcription that includes uh, ah, alas etc
- Intelligent verbatim that eliminates the unnecessary words which are not relevant to the subject matter
- Intelligent Transcription that is proofread and properly edited by transcriptionists.
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