Want to know more about our Transcriber Team?  Here’s the skinny on who is carrying out your work!

About Fiona, Owner of Outsource-Typing
I’ve worked in secretarial, administrative and Personal Assistant jobs for solicitors, doctors, company directors and other professionals from 1996 until starting Outsource-Typing in 2011.  From then on I worked as a freelance transcriber, doing as much as I can – anything and everything! – to build up experience until recruiting my team in February 2015.  I’m also formally qualified in editing and proofreading, and all work is “double filtered” through me for a final proofing before being returned.

Our Transcriber Team
My team of transcribers have backgrounds in legal, medical, corporate and interview transcription.

• We never use non-human methods (i.e. speech recognition software) to produce your transcript
• Our Transcriber Team are all UK-based and we only ever use our own staff – we never outsource to other transcription companies, therefore the quality and service level therefore is one you can depend on
• Confidentiality is paramount and we have policies and procedures in place to protect your data

Find out more about our culture.

What we offer “as standard”
We listen carefully and analyse exactly what is being said.  We realise it is crucial to capture all of the information and its meaning.  Anything that is unclear or where there is any uncertainty in meaning, our transcribers will assist in picking this out and marking it clearly within the transcript for you to double-check.  We are professionals and will carefully examine the speech and ensure you have an accurate and reliable document.

There are no hidden charges.  Included in our cost, which starts from as little as £0.85 per audio minute:

• Research – we research unfamiliar terminology, place and person names
• Participants – all speakers, interviewees and participants are clearly identified within the transcript.  We are used to dealing with multi-speaker interviews where there can be as many as 10 or more people speaking during a session.  We take extra measures to identify exactly who is speaking.
• Understanding of nuances – e.g. homophones
• Emotions – pauses, laughing, crying, raised voice, quiet tone/whispering, etc., can be added
• Quotes – from text are clearly marked out on a separate paragraph
• Publications – all references to any books or publications are italicised
• Inaudible/unclear words/phrases – anything unclear is marked up with a “time-stamp” for easy and quick referencing/review
• Accuracy and continuity – all work is proofread by the Transcriber Team, but then is also passed through a quality control process to ensure it meets our continued/sustained high standard
• Tones, accents, verbal habits – you can rely on our extensive experience in dealing with all types of style and speech

Working out costs
Because you know the audio file(s) duration before we even begin to hit any keys, you can easily work out the exact price for the job.  We will review the audio prior to commencement to let you know the rate.  Rates can vary depending difficulty: audio quality, number of participants, etc., but start at £1 per audio minute (pam).  Therefore, for example, for 1 hour audio length at a £1/pam rate, the calculation would be 60 (mins) x £1.00 = £60 total cost.

A word about voice recognition / speech recognition software
“Speech-to-text” in the Google results may bring up some tempting offers for you.  Voice software may work for you if you find you are regularly dictating large chunks of unformatted text, i.e. simple paragraphs in a Word document, with no numbering, headings, etc. – or you can add these in easily later on… not always as easy as it may sound, however (more on that below).  Where it falls down especially is with medical terminology, which can be broad.  Likewise for some legal terms, or Latin – it doesn’t seem to cope with Latin very well at all!  Interview transcripts, due to their complex nature, cannot be put through the software, and need to be sent to an experienced service – such as ours…  #justsaying!

What users have also found is there can be a long period of time spent “training” it to get to know your voice and verbal habits – some of which it may never pick up!  Therefore, there may be an indefinite period of having to replace its errors manually with the correct words or phrases. Great if you have the patience and time for this.  It may appear to save you money in the long term, but then don’t forget to factor in the time you will inevitably spend cutting and pasting the text into your report or document template, adding numbering to paragraphs or bullets, etc., which can be technical, and frustrating if you don’t know what you are doing; even if you do know what you’re doing do you want to be spending your precious time on this when you could be focusing on other business tasks?!

As mentioned above, included in our price, we type everything for you – exactly how it was meant, fully researched, properly formatted – the finished article.  All you might need to do is tweak it here and there with any additions or edits you may have.  Easy.

I personally haven’t tried the voice software, but I am going on reliable feedback from contacts and clients who have trialled it in the past.  Feel free to comment below your experiences with using voice recognition transcription software.