Interview Transcription Services

While recordings need to be played and replayed, back and forth, to get the exact information you are looking for, transcripts make it easy to find the desired information. A transcript is also important for the purposes of identifying and highlighting key topics discussed in an interview. Accurate interview transcripts for research are critical for obtaining meaningful intelligence from data.

To get your recording into a suitable transcript, you have two options to consider.

Transcribe It Yourself

The first option is to transcribe the recordings yourself. While this seems reasonable and saves money, is usually not viable if you require the information urgently, or are not very patient. Transcription requires a lot of time. It can take an entire day to transcribe interviews with 60 minutes of recording. For professional transcribers, with a typing speed of 100 words or more a minute, it still takes about 4 times more time to transcribe the actual length of the recording. For yourself, check this article on how fast transcribers need to be to complete their transcripts within certain times.

For most users, this amount of time is not doable, especially for many professionals. Time is of the essence in many cases. For example, a journalist in media needs their interviews transcribed for breaking news, a university, academic, business, researcher requires a correct analysis for a key finding, or a lawyer or medical practitioner needs the perfect transcript for a pending decision or the outcome of a case.

Outsource Transcription

The second option is to outsource recordings to a reliable transcription service. If this is your preference, then you must choose between using one of the more recent AI machine speech to text services or to a reliable human transcription service. Both services have their benefits and disadvantages when it comes to providing interview transcription services. Alternatively, hybrid models that engage both human transcribers and software to provide the transcript, like Nibity, are an option for those with specific transcript requirements.

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Way With Words’ standard transcription service is calculated on a per audio or video minute rate. Pricing depends on the turnaround time chosen and the add-on options selected. The longer the turnaround and the fewer the add-ons selected, the lower the price. Use our calculator below and get started ↴

In summary, it can be concluded that despite all advances with AI and machine transcription, a consistently high level of accuracy is still assured by using a reputable human transcription service.

Interview Transcription Tips

Whichever option you select to transcribe your interview recordings,​ ensure your interview transcript follows these rules:

Ensure Accuracy

Your interview transcript should be a document that accurately represents each speaker’s words,​ conversational quality,​ and speech patterns. To achieve this, leave out things that slow the researcher down: filler words like “er,​” “um,​” “and then,​” “you know,​” and other redundant false starts and superfluous comments like “how interesting” or “really?” or “wow!” which the interviewer makes only to show that he is listening.

Make It Easy To Understand

The interview transcript should be easy to read and understand,​ with the correct spelling of words,​ the correct spelling of place names,​ people’s names,​ and brand names. This will provide ready-to-be-used material for a project,​ for a thesis,​ for a book,​ for the next day’s newspapers.

Be Thorough

Finally, an interview transcript should be complete and​ include all the words and transcribable sounds in their order of occurrence.