In my last post I gave you a brief history on transcription. In this post we will discuss many types and uses of transcription services. The most commonly known are probably medical and legal. Here’s a pretty extensive list.

Transcription Service Types and Uses:

• Academic transcription can be used for transcribing lecture notes, study group notes; research notes such as you would use to write your papers.
• Business transcription can be used to transcribe conferences, meetings, speeches, interviews, voice mails, phone calls, and conference calls. Industry types might be airlines, insurance companies, health field, legal, and auto industry.
• Dictation might include transcribing letters, memos, and notes for doctors, attorneys, professors, and corporate board meetings.
• Focus Groups transcripts can be used to help to analyze the data collected from the interviews, and to create reports.
• Interview transcripts can be transcribed of one-on-one interviews, research interviews, etc. for researchers, teachers, writers, and consultants.
• Insurance statements, reports, and investigation notes can be transcribed.
• Legal transcripts can be completed for memos, depositions, court hearings, correspondence, and wire taps.
• Medical transcripts are commonly used in Cardiology, Dermatology, Neurology, Dental, Radiology, and much more.
• Meetings from corporate board meetings to one-on-one meetings are often recorded and a transcript is a great way to make that information easier to access.
• Podcasts / Audios / Videos are becoming very popular today online, but not everyone likes to watch or listen or perhaps they are deaf. Providing a transcript is a great way to help reach a broader audience.
• Sermons are also commonly recorded and having them transcribed can make it easy to post the transcript online to reach those who might not otherwise be reached.

This list is not all inclusive, but should give you a good number of ideas of the types of transcripts that can be done and the uses for those transcripts.

There is a cleaned up transcript and a verbatim transcript. A cleaned up transcript would eliminate all ums and ohs, all background noise, and possibly corrected language use. Verbatim is exactly what is heard. The conversation is not altered in any way. All ums, ohs, background noise, coughing, laughing, etc. are included. There is no grammar correction. Verbatim is commonly used in court hearings or legal and medical transcripts. Of course there are no set in stone rules here the client can specify that they want semi-verbatim and give the transcriber their own rules and guidelines for the transcript For instance you may want the words to be transcribed exactly but leave out background noises, pauses, etc.

I hope this article has given you a better understanding of the types and uses of transcription. If you didn’t read part 1 of this 3 part series please click here.

Please leave any comments or questions below. I would be more than happy to answer your questions.