Why would it take 3 hours to transcribe an hour of audio if its only 1 hour?
A person speaks about 180-250 words per minute, while a transcriptionist can transcribe about 8 to 12 pages an hour, depending upon the quality of the tape. Speeches and interviews are easier to transcribe than focus groups or business meetings. What do you consider difficult audio and why am I being charge more for them? Difficult audio can be as follows: “Foreign” accents or non-native English speakers, audio source far from speakers, technical words (medical, legal, foreign words, industry-specific words, etc.), meetings with many cross-talking such as focus groups, loud background noise that interferes with understanding the speaker’s words, etc. These difficult audio take more time to transcribe as we need to relisten, sometimes over and over again. If you have a question about your audio, please give us a call and we can provide an estimate of your work.
Basically, we speak much faster than even the fastest typist can type. Also, we don’t just type what we hear – we have to ensure it makes sense and analyze the information being said. Although we only type what is being said (unless specifically requested to edit), it’s not just a matter of the right words, but also the right punctuation and, of course, picking the correct homonym (e.g. there or their, two, to or too). Transcribing also includes a fair amount of time for research and editing.
