I like doing these hits, I do, and they have been very good to me, BUT just want to put something here for the " newbies" or perhaps those that don't know. DON'T do your transcription on the Mturk platform and save it as you go along, in my experience it doesn't save for me, BUT that doesn't mean it isn't saving your work. My suggestion is to ALWAYS do your work in Word and then cut and paste it or attach to the hit when submitting. I was doing some work the other day and a bad storm took out our power. When I was able to sign back onto the internet, I recvd an email asking me where the " rest" of the transcript was ( here's the thing, I DID NOT submit it, nor did I save it actually). I advised that I didn't submit and was told that when you " save" in the Mturk platform that whatever you have there is sent to Speechink. Just a tip, from my own personal experience. We all know we work too darn hard for the little money that any of these transcription requester's pay, but they do pay the most. I would hate to see a noob do a bunch of working, saving away, and then run out of time, only to provide the company a quarter, half, or three quarters of the work already done. and not get paid.
Thank you so much for that info ! I'm just starting to do transcription work for Speechink. Do you have any special tools, software, or anything that I might find helpful ? I appreciate any feedback, thank you !!!
Hi dancing, just read your thread. Wish I read it before. I'll know now. But, not complain, they should fix that problem.
I'd be a bit reluctant to use Word because it is famous for putting in weird characters. This may only be in html, but I would still use a text editor instead.
The other thing to know about them is their style guides are confusing and their proofreaders are incompetent. I once got flagged for putting spaces after periods at the ends of paragraphs. What the heck. And then I had to write the company and ask for that to be reviewed. The response I got was that that was a mistake, that sometimes their proofreaders work too fast or are a little too eager. I've had a lot of things like that which were marked off that shouldn't have been marked off, and I've had to write the company every time. If you have a rating below 96, you can't get any more work, so effectively a 94 on a transcript means you're fired. Something I had trouble understanding at the beginning but seems obvious now: Their style guides are not meant to be taken together. Look at the style guide linked to the job and follow that one precisely. Forget about any other style guides of theirs you might have read. Oh, and if you requested a qualification, don't be in a hurry. It's been over a month since I requested one, and I still haven't heard back. Don't be shy about contacting them. I've had to email them numerous times. Every rating I've ever gotten has been 94 or below. Sounds like I'm a horrible transcriber; right? I'm actually a retired court reporter. I've done huge cases, like murder trials and class action lawsuits. Somehow I was good enough for that, but Speechink's proofreaders barely think I'm good enough for work for them for $2/hour. One last bit of advice from me: Their lousy proofreaders line up to proofread transcripts of jobs that are 10 minutes or less. If you take on a long job, nobody will want to proofread it, which is a good thing in their little world. (Incidentally, if this were court reporting school, the rating would be weighted by the difficulty and length of the material as well; but with Speechink, a minute long video of two comedians drinking beer will make or break you, while a two-hour business seminar will count for naught. Go figure.) I've made a little money working for this company, but the pay is so terrible and the proofreaders so inept that I'm not sure I'll stick around much longer.