Tag Archives for digital transcription

Why Do They Criticize Digital Transcription Service as a Profession?

A lot of people pooh-pooh the digital transcription service. This makes digital transcription-aspirants skeptical of the profession. Let us look at why the profession is criticized.The job is considered a glorified typing job. Critics of the digital transcription service as a profession think that the transcriptionist’ job is no better than a secretary’s or a typist’s. They have absolutely no clue that the digital transcription service as a profession is a specialized one. Since there are no stringent eligibility criteria to enter this profession, critics feel that anyone can handle the job. While it is true that you do not need to possess a certain qualification or have an experience, you cannot become a transcriptionist if you don’t have the right aptitude. The entry in the field may be easy but survival isn’t. The digital transcription service is extremely challenging, requiring individuals to be always on their toes.

Another misconception is that the profession is not a specialized one. The truth is that a transcription service provider from another field cannot work as a digital transcriptionist. Apart from possessing a certain aptitude, the digital transcriptionist has to possess an in-depth medical knowledge in order to comprehend the medical information and convert them into meaningful, relevant, and complete healthcare records. Critics have also mentioned that technology will replace the transcription service provider sooner or later. While it is true that the speech recognition software is capable of converting spoken words into text, it cannot deliver absolutely accurate results. Moreover, the software requires doctors to train it and then record information in it with utmost precision. If doctors had the time, they would make medical documents themselves instead of recording them as audio. The software, thus, loses its purpose. Also, it cannot analyze like a human transcriptionist. All these factors make the software far from being a threat to the digital transcriptionist’s job. Instead, it has become the transcriptionists’ friend by easing off the pressure on them.The fears around the profession are misplaced and the criticism unjustified. If you are interested in the digital transcription service as a career, seek advice from the experts before making your decision.            

Is Digital Transcription Done by a Machine Completely Dependable?

If you think that digital transcription done by a machine is fast, affordable and dependable, then you need to reconsider your thoughts. Machines can probably transcribe speech that is concise, clear and free from any particular accent.

Computers sometimes perform digital transcription of speech which is exactly opposite of that said in the audio, which results in the wrong interpretation of the speech. It sometimes skips significant or connecting words and can add words that change the entire meaning that is conveyed in the audio.

Sometimes it so happens that the gap in the speech is transcribed with words that are randomly generated by the system. Although these type of commissions are not seen often but machines sometimes commit such mistakes.

Poor punctuation and general formats cannot be avoided with machine transcription. It also happens that crystal clear conversations or speech is not transcribed correctly. It is hard for machines to transcribe audio that is too quick or too slow.

Often device generated transcripts prove to be detrimental to students that try to follow the speech with the help of subtitles with words either omitted and unwanted words added and wrongly punctuated.

Editing a transcript is often time consuming with machine transcription when compared to manual transcription that can be done easily from the scratch. Hence it is advisable to use manual digital transcription services when it comes to important and confidential speech and audio transcriptions.

Manual transcription is always reliable, and 100% accurate as the transcriber will try to transcribe that is heard in the audio and will not add any extra words or do not omit important words from the speech.