Over and over I read posts on online, and time and again the questions come up, why transcription? You read this and think, well surely you’ll tell me why, you’re a transcription company. Well, yeah we are, (www.ttctranscriptions.com – yes, a shameless plug, but I’ve got 3 kids to feed) but I digress and assure you it’s a lot deeper than that.
In our office, we see a wide range of diverse projects that flow through, and the transcriptions range from: oral history, personal history, archival, legal, academic, market research, financial, and surely the list goes on.
In the legal world, transcripts have been known to be an important resource for all parties, a document to easily read the depositions, examinations, and so on. People on both sides of the courtroom utilize the transcript to make sure no lies are being stated by anyone (there’s a lie)…well, possibly to catch people in those lies.
Why transcription? Well, think about this question. How “searchable” is your audio? Say you’re an Oral Historian, and you’ve just conducted hours of interviews with someone. The last thing you want to do is to go back and listen to all of these hours of audio. Through a transcript, you can easily read specific sections of text, copy and paste, and move on to the next part of text you require.
For more information on transcription, check out some listservs, and see what others are saying. SAA (Society of American Archivists), OHA (Oral History Association), and APH (Association of Personal Historians, though you have to be a paid member of APH to be on the listserv) are some great listservs to check out. As always you may contact us, The Tape Transcription Center, and find out more about how a transcript is able to help you!
The Tape Transcription Center
www.ttctranscriptions.com
617-423-2151
Never a charge for RUSH service, never!
That’s interesting that you can easily move, copy and past, and see specific sections of a text with a transcript. I would think this would be especially beneficial for productions because things move fast when you’re doing something like that. Whoever does those would just need to find somewhere to get production transcripts.
Hello Amanda, Thanks for the reply, and my apologies for the belated reply. I’d be interested in talking more with you about this topic, and about your thoughts and theories on transcription. -Michael