hello, iam a novice in transcription. i have tried transcribing in mturk for claritrans and casting words. but the time required is too long. so if anyone here can give some expert tips on transcribing, especially what should be the right setup or should i use any softwares. any small tip is worthy. i also want to know if there are other RELIABLE WEBSITES where transcription work is available. tnx in advance!
Shreyas, A lot of the people who do bigger HITS, like for Casting Words, use a foot pedal with Express Scribe (free software). If you are transcribing something into an editor, like Word, you can also use a word expander. It's a huge dictionary that you can edit, and it'll allow you to type shortcuts. For instance, maybe it would be set up that if you typed evtg, it would expand it to everything. I like the small ClariTrans jobs, but the style guide is so completely different than that of CastingWords. I suggest that you find a company that you like, work really hard on memorizing their style guide and checking it against your work until you are satisfied. Then, you can really start to move along at a brisk pace. Best of luck to you!
tnx for the detailed reply and it will help me a lot. do u work for any other transcription companies online?
If you don't have it already, find Express Scribe or InqScribe online to do transcriptions. They both have perfectly adequate free versions you can download and use. I used to use Express Scribe all the time, but for some reason, when I upgraded my iMac to Snow Leopard, Express Scribe started making my entire computer freeze up and I switched to using InqScribe. InqScribe has a find and replace function, which I really like; but Express Scribe can alter the quality of the audio somewhat by rolling off the bass in varying degrees which really helps with difficult audio. (But it can only do so much. Bad audio is still bad audio.) There's also a program called TextExpander that you can try for free; but if you don't buy it, an annoying popup message comes up over and over and over again until you either pay for it or throw it away. It takes little snippets that you type and changes them to the longer version that you tell it to: like "teh" becomes "the," "ppl" becomes "people," etc. And yeah, get a pedal. It makes a big, big difference. Other than that, if you think you just type slow, don't sweat it and just keep going because the more you type the faster you get over time. And, (here's my mantra) high grade, high grade, high grade! There's a lot of transcription hits up; don't do anything that you can't hear. There's stuff in there that just can't reasonably be deciphered by mere humans. They sit forever and no one will do them. I don't know what happens to those. I imagine someone at Casting Words handing it back to the customer and saying, "Sorry dude, you need a psychic, not a transcriptionist." Uh, oh yeah, I was going to include this link to the casting words transcript list, because it's so much easier to look through the list here than directly through mturk: http://turkers.castingwords.com/hit/list Hope this helps! *
You can also set up your Word to correct words so that you type faster. I used to have one of the programs that have the dictionary and change words for you, but I have a really old computer and it slowed it down too much. So the main disadvantage for me is that I only have text correction in Word. Everywhere else I have to type things all the way out.
Other than that, if you think you just type slow, don't sweat it and just keep going because the more you type the faster you get over time.????