4 Types Of Transcription: Definition and Examples

Transcription services have evolved into a valuable tool that allows businesses to save time and money. By converting speech, audio, and video recordings into written or electronic text documents, organizations are able to meet project deadlines and focus on their primary goals.

Important meetings and discussions are documented, resulting in precise accounts that may be utilized for sending easy-to-understand reports to clients, providing trustworthy customer service, and backtracking and executing sales and marketing strategies.

Transcription, when used as a bridge between customers and businesses, enables marketers to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of their target audience's purchasing behavior.

Transcribing also improves business adaptability by making it easier to determine which concepts and information may still be rehashed or upgraded into a technique of branding and reaching out to clients.

What is audio transcription and where is it used? Let’s discuss.

What Is Audio Transcription?

Audio transcription is the process of converting an audio file or a piece of dialogue into a text file. The audio file can come in the form of any audio recording, such as interviews, podcasts, journals, music video clips, or conference recordings.

It’s not as easy as listening and listing down the words you hear. The transcriber must keep in mind the source’s context, be aware of grammar rules and spelling, and know how to recognize tone.

Audio transcriptions are not only important for archiving reasons but also for providing accessibility for people with disabilities (PWD). Transcriptions can be applied to providing accurate subtitles, script sources for screen reader tools, and even guides for lip readers.

Types of Transcription Every Industry Can Utilize

There’s no denying that the practice of transcribing for brands has evolved over time to stay aligned with the constantly changing digital trends. This resulted in the development of different types of transcription services and a wider coverage. The rise of video content in digital marketing, in particular, has driven brands to seek the advantages of transcription of their videos.

Currently, there are four fundamental transcription types: edited, intelligent, verbatim, and phonetic.

Edited Transcription

Edited transcription, or clean verbatim transcription, is a type of transcription that focuses on delivering a readable and clear document by conducting thorough editing. As the name suggests, edited transcription edits the original content of the source. Grammatical issues are corrected, and unnecessary content like incomplete sentences and slang are omitted.

But this cleanup does not mean that the original text’s overall idea and essence are altered. However, the tone might shift to a more formal one due to being the most strictly proofread, formatted, and edited type.

Due to the formality afforded by this transcription type, edited transcription is more suitably used in professional settings like the business industry. It is widely seen in transcriptions for conferences, seminars, and speeches. The readability makes it more appealing and relevant to whoever the brand wishes to target with the documents being transcribed.

Barring the need for verbatim texts, edited transcription would also be ideal for academic and medical documents. 

Another addition would be the field of publishing, considering that the documents generated from the previously mentioned fields are usually published. And within the realm of publishing, the translation industry is also included.

Intelligent Transcription

Intelligent transcription, also called intelligent verbatim transcription, is similar to edited transcription but uses a more natural approach to its style of editing. Simply put, it’s the midpoint between edited transcription and verbatim transcription.

Its light editing is limited to correcting grammatical errors and omitting repetitions, expressions of acknowledgment or deep thought, and fillers like "uh", "um," "er,” etc. Pauses are also removed, and long, rambling sentences are rewritten to be more coherent.

This type of transcribing aims at accuracy, eliminating phrases that are irrelevant to the conversation or the discussion’s main topic.

But the crucial part in intelligent transcription is the ability to determine the gist of the message and preserve it in the document and to retain most or all of its original tone.

Its similarity to edited transcription also makes intelligent transcription applicable in the business and medical industries for instances where formality is not a must, as long as the main point of the source is retained.

Verbatim Transcription

Verbatim transcription aims to capture both the verbal and non-verbal components of the media being transcribed. Which means that elements like fillers, stammers, and expressions are left in.

The lack of editing doesn’t make the job easier nevertheless. Every detail from the source must be transcribed, making the amount of information heavier and the task much more complicated.

The verbatim transcription definition is to literally transcribe the contents of the media source. Aside from the essence of the message, every factor recorded in the source, from the shifts in breathing, emotion, tone, interruptions in the speech, and even background noises, is noted in the final written output.

The completeness of a verbatim transcription makes it the best option to use in the legal industry. It’s a more reliable source for situations where the truthfulness of transpired events and human behavior is taken into account, like court hearings and police investigations.

The mentioned factors are also valuable in scientific and marketing research. These two fields, after all, need accurate results and consider every miniscule deviation from the mean.

Phonetic Transcription

Phonetic transcription, in contrast to the other types of transcription services, is not so much about capturing the meaning but rather how the words are spoken using phonetic symbols.

Transcribers represent each speech sound with its corresponding symbol based on the standard representation set by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). These symbols are called phonemes, the smallest units of speech that distinguish one word from another.

Phonetic transcription has a much more specialized usage within the field of linguistics and academia. This approach is especially useful for teachers, people learning foreign languages, linguists, the entertainment industry, and even the realm of speech-language.

Afterwords

social landscape and opportunities

The changing social landscape and opportunities opened by technologies necessitate business owners to adapt in order to develop. Being open to multiple mediums and providing accessibility allows the business a wider reach and boosts brand visibility.

The use of audio transcriptions, whether edited, intelligent, verbatim, or phonetic, allows businesses to convey their ideas and increase their interaction with the audience. Besides marketing, the availability of these transcript types is vital for brands to record their non-text content for archiving and legal purposes.