Online Digital Typing & Translations @ The Typing Factory The typing services provider for high quality, low cost online typing & translations services
1. How long does one hour of dictation take to transcribe?
The professional industry standard allows one hour to transcribe 15 minutes of clearly recorded speech. However, we - at www.typingfactory.com - appreciate that there can be huge variations in this, depending on a number of factors that we will go into more fully below.
2. Why does it take so long?
It is a commonly held misconception that it only takes one hour to transcribe one hour of recorded speech. This is incorrect. We speak much faster than we can type or write. It is generally accepted that we can speak four times faster than we can type and speak seven times faster than we can write.
3. What other things affect the transcribing time?
- The quality of the recording
This can be affected as much by the recording equipment itself, as by eventual background noise, which obscures the words or the recording volume.
- The clarity of the voices on the audio file
If the speaker's voice is hard to hear because the speaker is holding the voice-recorder too far from the mouth or mumbles, speaks too fast or too low, our transcribers may not be able to decipher the words.
- The number of people speaking
Some recordings of groups, meetings or seminars can be affected by the tendency of voices to overlap or by the difficulty in identifying who is speaking at any one time, particularly if the speakers do not identify themselves. Multiple participant recordings take longer than one-to-one interviews.
- The speed at which one talks
It would be helpful if the person dictating would merely try to bear in mind the fact that he or she is actually dictating a certain text in order to have it typed out for a particular purpose and adjust his or her dictating speed rate accordingly, otherwise it might become difficult for the transcriber to provide the respective client with satisfying results. Whether they speak in coherent sentences Everyday speech is usually littered with ‘ums' and ‘ers'. People switch thought in mid-sentence or don't speak in coherent sentences at all. In such situations, the transcriber must go back and work out where to insert the punctuation so as not to lose the thread of the whole piece. The more coherent speakers are, the less time it takes to transcribe their words. The transcriber can 'type as they talk' and rarely needs to go back and puzzle out the meaning.
