Professional transcription services are in great demand in the academic industry just as in other industrial sectors. Students, professors and researchers among others need to transcribe interviews, lectures, seminars and conferences. When planning to hire an academic transcription service, it is important to understand the rates of transcription.
The quality of output determines the payment of transcription. Hiring a proficient transcription service is very important for accurate transcription of the audio or video files. Following are some of the factors that determine the rates of transcription.
- Quality of the Audio: In order to get quality transcripts it is important to have a good quality audio recording. It ensures clarity of the recording and thereby good quality in transcription. Moreover, when the audio quality is good, it involves less editing, less time to transcribe and eliminates any editing costs. If the audio quality is poor, expensive and supplementary editing may be required.
- Style of Transcription: Typically, transcription services provide a default style of transcript and work with a standard rate. If you require a change in transcription style or some adjustment in the transcription, it can increase the cost and special instructions have to be given to the vendor according to individual requirements.
- Turnaround Time: Turnaround time is another factor that determines the cost. If you have a huge project for transcription, the ideal way is to plan ahead so that only one transcriptionist would have to work on the project. This is much cheaper than employing many transcriptionists to transcribe a huge project in order to meet the turnaround time requirements.
- Length of the audio: The longer the audio, the costlier would be the rates of transcription. Usually transcription services are paid per minute of the audio file but you may want to pay per page if you have a long recording with a number of blanks in it. You can also edit out the blank spaces before giving the audio for transcription.
- Number of Speakers: An audio file with multiple speakers is difficult to transcribe and hence it is costlier whereas person to person interview or one person recording is much cheaper. Focus group transcription which involves more than two speakers takes more time and effort to transcribe and is therefore costlier.
- Editing: Editing of a transcript is another factor that determines the price of transcription. Editing, proofreading difficult terms, customized formatting such as request for page lines, numbers, logos, headers and footers can be expensive whereas bigger font size, larger margins and less lines can be cheaper.
- Time Stamping: Time stamping is an additional service for additional fees based on requirements. A time stamp becomes useful for reference purposes if the audio recording is of very poor quality.
- Accent: A clear audio recording with good accent is much easier to transcribe than an audio file with poor accent that is difficult to understand. So if you have an audio file with poor accent, you will have to pay more.
- Subject matter: Transcription that requires more understanding of the subject or the industry is costlier. For example, medical transcription and legal transcription can be costlier than general transcription.
Partnering with a professional academic transcription service or online transcription service provider can ensure you high quality output with utmost accuracy. They use advanced technology and skilled transcriptionists to deliver optimal transcripts at affordable rates. They also provide customized service according to your specific needs and ensure confidentiality of data.
