There are two types of transcription to think about. There are human transcription services and automated transcription. Some people prefer automated services for a degree of machine precision, but there’s also a lot of merits to human transcription.
There are quite a few industries where human transcription is the best choice, so let’s take a look at them.
The Medical World
Accurate transcription can mean the difference between life and death for patients. Therefore, any transcription process that takes place needs to be accurate, reliable, and often human.
Human transcription services are key because they can be used to keep track of abbreviations and medical terminology, which is used in normal conversation. Some of these specialist terms and abbreviations won’t necessarily be known to a computer, so automated transcription may not be as accurate or comprehensive.
The Legal World
In the legal world, it’s important to have human transcription services because they make a big difference. Legal meetings and procedures. All often use complex terms and sophisticated language that a machine might struggle to translate effectively. Human transcription is much more reliable.
It’s important that legal transcription is accurate because entire cases and proceedings can rely on a good transcription. Therefore, it’s better to use the human approach and make sure that everything is transcribed in the right way.
The Higher Education World
The world of higher education often has students transcribing entire lectures to gain as much information as possible from the lecturers. Not every student is good at taking precise notes in a short time, especially when they are trying to keep up with the lecture, so transcription is often the best way to get around the problem because you can just record an entire lesson's worth of audio and then transcribe it out at your leisure.
There are two main reasons why students need to transcribe notes by hand. First of all, lecturers often talk about complex ideas and difficult concepts. Translating these types of lectures accurately is difficult for a machine. Second of all, it’s often a great way to learn a subject when you transcribe it.
The Market Research World
When you do transcriptions of interviews and surveys, you can pick up a lot of key information, which will help out with making decisions for the company.
However, you’ll need to be able to separate out speakers and accurately translate slang - things a machine may struggle with.
The Public Relations and Media World
The media world needs a lot of human translation to provide clear, objective reporting on events and to record interviews.
Machines just can’t do this with enough accuracy and nuance, so human transcription picks up another feather in the cap.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to things like human transcription, they can be useful and, in many ways, are more reliable than machines. We’d recommend human services above all others, which is why London Transcription is happy to help.