From recording meetings to documenting legal processes, there are numerous reasons for a business to make use of transcription services. Transcription services refer to the capturing of audio or visual media as text – most commonly as subtitles, but transcription can also appear as other forms of technical speech documentation. Professional transcription is an important aspect of work for many industries, particularly for law firms, medical practices, research institutions, media houses and journalism organisations, as well as for individuals working on personal projects.
Accurate transcription necessitates a specialised skill set and technical equipment for the best result and entails a far more complex procedure than one may imagine. This can make it a difficult process to implement in-house and adds benefit to outsourcing your transcription work to a professional, qualified language service provider like ILC (International Language Consultancy).
There are several reasons why any company could benefit from the use of transcription services beyond the more obvious functions. So, in this article, we will examine what your business stands to gain from professional transcription services, and why ILC’s transcription offerings are the optimal choice.
1. Improve the value and accessibility of your content
ILC’s transcription service boasts an accuracy rate of 99%, and we’re set on ensuring that your transcription file captures the source content as closely as possible. To this end, we have thorough transcription and review processes in place and a team of qualified experts to guarantee high-quality content.
Accurate and professional transcription services offer myriad benefits for any company that deals with audio or visual material. Enlisting the help of a transcription company can elevate a piece of media to be more easily understandable and accessible, particularly for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences. Many audiences appreciate the accessibility of clear and accurate subtitling, making it a beneficial focus for any media company.
Companies also stand to benefit from using a transcription service to improve their SEO. Search engines use bots that pick up on written keywords, so adding a transcription to any online video or audio material makes the content more searchable, thereby driving traffic to your company’s website.
Adding transcription creates an improved user experience, with many people preferring a text-based option for receiving information. Users are able to quickly scan through information as opposed to listening, which can be more time-consuming for some. For readers using your content for their own research, the text format transcription can allow for easier data extraction and analysis.
Converting audio or written material into a transcribed text file also allows you to repurpose that content for use as blog posts, social media posts, articles, infographics, or whitepapers to bolster your company’s marketing offerings. For example, say your company held a seminar or a panel discussion, which was recorded for reference purposes. By transcribing the spoken content of that seminar, you would be able to craft articles and posts based on the discussion points, thereby further harnessing that information and getting added value from it.
2. Save costs and boost productivity
Our transcription services come off the back of years of technological expertise and experience in the language industry. Save your team the time, resources, and cost of searching for the right transcription service and let ILC handle the process. With a client list that includes top global banks and law firms, high-accuracy transcription services and efficient timelines are a must for us; you can rest assured that your content files are in good hands, allowing your team to focus on other aspects of the project at hand.
ILC’s offerings include three main types of transcription services: verbatim, clean verbatim, and non-verbatim. Verbatim transcripts are text captures of every word from audio or visual files, including filler words, grammatical errors, and other cues that arise from audible speech. This transcription often applies to interpreting interviews and legal cases. Clean verbatim transcription includes minor edits and ‘clean up’ of the transcription file that removes false starts, stuttering, filler words, and any other sounds or cues to leave you with a clean documentation of your original file. Non-verbatim transcription is often used by academics or researchers and removes all unnecessary speech without changing the core meaning and structure of the audio or visual file.
No matter what your transcription needs may be, ILC has an offering best suited to it. All of our transcription services can also come with timestamping should you require it. Based on your content and requirements, timestamps can appear as periodic, sentence, paragraph, and speaker timestamps. Timestamping is enormously beneficial as it allows you to easily find a specific section of the transcript without having to pore over the entire file. It’s also helpful if your audio video project is being worked on by an editor, as they will then be able to refer to timestamped sections in the transcript for their editing alongside the video file.
3. Ensure high accuracy and precision for your content
Given that ILC is a professional transcription company, accuracy and client satisfaction are our overarching priorities. Our large, professionally-trained transcription team has experience with transcribing legal meetings, disciplinaries, directors’ meetings, and interviews, so we understand that precision is vital. Beyond transcribing your material, ILC will gather specifications from you, such as industry-specific terms and speaker names, to ensure our transcription services are as informed as possible.
After all of your files are transcribed, they will be individually reviewed multiple times to further ensure accuracy. ILC’s 99% accuracy rate is something that we pride ourselves on maintaining, to provide our clients the peace of mind that the transcription files they receive are as close to perfect standard as possible.
To ensure your transcription files are accurate and seamlessly recorded, we stay up to date with and make use of the latest software and equipment, including ExpressScribe transcription software, industry-standard foot pedals, Mediahuman audio conversion software, and more. Our dedicated workflow keeps projects running smoothly and on track, starting with designating the perfect transcriber or transcription team for your project and maintaining consistent communication throughout the transcription and review process.
Our quality control process is meticulous. As mentioned earlier, after all of your audio or visual files have been transcribed, they will be individually proofread multiple times before they are handed over to the transcription manager. The transcription manager will give all documents another read-through and call for any last changes necessary to meet your stipulated specifications. You will then receive your transcription files for approval, and thereafter we will happily make any changes to guarantee your complete satisfaction with the transcription services you have received.
4. Easily translate content
Our transcription services include transcription in all eleven official South African languages, as well as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. In addition to precise and efficient transcription services across multiple languages, ILC offers professional translation services in dozens of African and international languages alike. Should you be interested in learning more about our translation offerings, simply drop us an email and we will be happy to incorporate any of our other language services into your request.
Similarly to the benefit of transcribing content to create diverse text-based posts, if your company or business is trying to break into new markets, transcribing and translating your media offerings will allow you to create new content for international audiences. Being able to repurpose content and translate it for each of your target markets can be easy with the use of a transcription service to do the technical work for you.
Transcribing files enables easier translation of that content for a number of reasons. Transcribing creates a clear written representation of the original content, and this kind of clarity helps translators understand the subtleties necessary for a close translation – as opposed to translating a video or audio file, which may prove more difficult and time-consuming.
Having a transcript in hand allows translators to focus on the linguistic aspects of translation and reduce the risk of mistranslation, leaving you with a more authentically translated piece. A written transcript is also a helpful quality control tool, as it provides an original file to refer to and allows translators to review content more rigorously.
5. Improve record-keeping and research
Having a transcription of original content is a convenient and reliable way to keep backups of your content that you can easily refer to. Transcriptions can be easier than audio or visual files to collate and disseminate as needed – this is particularly necessary, for instance, in the case of legal matters or for a company’s human resource and training purposes. Transcribed meetings or discussions with a written record can be shared among team members more easily, as employees are able to quickly cite text-based notes instead of clicking through a video or audio file. Transcription services can also help to ensure that all of your company’s documentation meets the necessary regulatory requirements.
For customer-facing companies, transcribing customer feedback and support interactions can provide valuable insight into improving your business’ processes. Conducting market research through transcription files is much more time efficient than reviewing hundreds or thousands of audio files, as well as being easier to make simple record of.
As mentioned, another important use for transcription is for legal compliance. Many industries, such as legal firms and hospitals, require accurate records and documentation. Transcriptions provide a detailed record to help businesses and organisations comply with legal regulatory requirements. Transcribing meetings, training sessions, and interviews also make it easier to keep an organised archive of important notes, making transcription services beneficial for any company’s human resources processes.
About International Language Consultancy
We offer a host of language services, with professional transcription being one such offering. We pride ourselves in providing precise and accurate transcription for a wide range of audio or visual material, in multiple languages. The high-quality transcription services that we provide are tools that any company in need of documentation or subtitling stands to benefit from utilising, as it contributes to cost savings, excellent content quality, boosted productivity and efficiency, easy translation, and improved record keeping and market research.
Get in touch with our team to learn more about how your project can benefit from using a professional transcription service today.