Transcription Services
In translation projects sometimes the first step will be the transcription of recorded material into a written form. When clients have video or audio materials to be translated but have no script, we will transcribe them. Often the original will be in a foreign language and needs to be translated into English.
Adelphi Studio also offer legal transcription services. We have transcribed legal materials including PACE tapes (Police and Criminal Evidence) in many languages including Urdu, Hindi, Bengali etc. but most requests are still for English transcription.
Adelphi Transcription and Translation Services offer:
- Transcription in the same language as the source file.
- Transcription where the original source language is transcribed directly into the target language.
- Transcription where the source language is required along with a translation into the target language. The two languages are usually provided to the client in parallel text.
- Adelphi Translations has transcribed from audio CDs, video DVDs , Betamax tapes, cassette tapes, MP3, AVI, MPG and WAV formats.
The Problems of Transcription
Transcription can vary enormously in its difficulty. Our recent project involved poor quality recordings of telephone conversations in a mixture of Gujarati and English, making this project especially tricky. If a well-recorded narrator is speaking from a script ‘to camera’ this would be much easier. Even one-to-one interviews can be hard. When listening to a people speaking it is amazing how often sentences are garbled, stopped half-way, possibly continued later or not, speakers overlap each other and the whole conversation is littered with an amazing variety of ‘umms’, ‘errs’ and other vocal throw-aways. A speaker using a language in which they may be fluent but which is not their mother tongue, will also be more difficult to understand and transcribe.
The Basic Catagories of Transcription
There are two main categories of transcription:
Verbatim Transcription: a 100% accurate transcription of the submitted sound file or recording where nothing is omitted, and no alterations are allowed. This type of transcription service is often preferred for legal transcription (witness statements in court transcriptions) or conference transcriptions.
Intelligent Verbatim Transcription: The transcriptionist is allowed to do some editing to the recording. Abbreviations are replaced with full terms, irrelevant words may be eliminated and grammar may be corrected in order to make the transcription more intelligible and easier to read. This type of verbatim transcription will be better for for focus group transcriptions, academic transcriptions (lectures or speeches), corporate transcriptions or business transcriptions. Because of the editing work involved the cost of this type of transcription may be slightly higher.
Whatever your need, and whichever language the source files are recorded in, Adelphi can help you with your transcription needs.
Adelphi Translations is a full service translation agency producing translations, typesetting, multilingual and foreign language websites, voice overs, Flash files and subtitles in any language.
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