Audio or Video Transcription: Do You Need It?

There’s an old saying that says, “trust what you see, not what you hear,” and it’s something that brilliantly emphasizes the importance of audio and video transcription.

Transcription is a skilled process that involves listening to a recording, researching the topic to get an in-depth understanding of it, and then accurately typing the spoken language into text format. This can be done verbatim (exact word-for-word), or the transcriptionist can clean up the text to improve readability in certain parts of the speech.

Factors Influencing the Transcription Process

The time it takes a transcriptionist to produce a transcript of an audio or video file depends on several factors.  Here’s a look at the key factors that can impact transcription time:

Subject

If there’s a lot of research involved in the topic, it’ll naturally take longer to transcribe a file. It’s safe to say that it should take a professional transcriber about four hours to transcribe an hour-long university educational video. But in the case of the subject being clinical trials for something like cancer treatments, it would probably take up to six hours to transcribe. This is because there would be a fair amount of research required to ensure the spelling is accurate in the transcript.

Amount of Speakers

Multiple speakers in a conversation complicate the transcription process, so expect to pay more for your transcripts if there are various speakers involved.

Transcription Style

The style of transcription determines how detailed the final transcript must be. You can choose between verbatim, intelligent verbatim, and true verbatim. True verbatim includes every detail like laughter and ambient sounds. Obviously, it takes much longer to do true verbatim transcriptions than intelligent verbatim where background noises are left out.

When is Transcription Necessary?

There are many great reasons to get your video and audio files transcribed, but the main reasons include:

• Deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences. In this case, your transcripts can open up services to a whole new audience.
• Voice-over purposes. These kinds of transcriptions are generally used for corporate and explainer videos.
• Translation purposes. The first step in any translation process almost always involves transcription, and the transcript is used to create an array of foreign language versions of the original document.
• Closed captions and subtitling. If you’re adding captions and subtitles to your video content, a professional transcription is the first step in the right direction.

What Are the Benefits of Having Your Content Transcribed?

Transcripts Directly Improve SEO Scores

Whenever you transcribe audio or video media like podcasts, webinars, and videos and then post those transcripts with your original audio or video content, it boosts your SEO score. On average, pages that add transcripts to their media files gain about 16% more revenue than those that ignore transcripts. And YouTube videos that feature transcripts are viewed almost 8% more than those without.

And Make Your Brand More Accessible

Not all your audience members have access to audio content. In fact, there are more than 35 million hearing-impaired Americans, which is a potential goldmine you’ll be missing out on targeting if you don’t transcribe your content to cater to their needs.

It Can Improve the User Experience

A lot of viewers prefer taking a quick glance at a video or audio file’s transcript before watching or listening to it. With a transcript in place, you can give your viewers a sneak peek at what your content is all about, and in turn, might just gain a few new audience members for deploying a smart initiative like this. Your transcript also makes it easier for audience members to go back and find a specific snippet by scanning through the text instead of through an entire audio or video file.

Need Help with Professional Audio and Video Transcriptions?

Day Translations is here to cater to all your transcription and translation needs. We’re eager to help our clients succeed in the digital age and are proud to offer top-quality language services with the best quality and most competitive pricing. Are you ready to get your project rolling? Get in touch with our team today to find out how we can help give your content a text-based footprint!