So you’ve heard the term “verbatim style” transcription, but what does it mean and how is it different from what you might think of as “normal” or traditional transcription? More importantly, what kind of transcription do you need for your purposes? Is it important for every word and sound to be transcribed, do you need it to be grammatically correct with the right sentence structure and punctuation, or do you need a combination of the two?
To start, let’s define the three styles as the following:
Professional – Used for legal documents and letters and other forms of professional written communication. In this style, the transcriptionist will edit and correct the final copy to create a professional sounding document.
Verbatim – Used when the transcript needs to read exactly the way the recording or audio sounds, including all the ums, ahs, stuttered sounds, and partial words. Everything, including any false starts, repetitions, grammatical errors etc. are left unchanged. This style is typically ideal for insurance recorded statements, depositions, research transcription, PhD interviews, market research interviews, movie scripts, B-roll transcription, and other projects where HOW something is said is equally as important as WHAT’s being said.
Modified Verbatim Style:
Typically preferred by authors, journalists, bloggers and others who need to know exactly what was said on a recording but don’t necessarily need the extreme detail of verbatim transcription. This style involves transcription followed by light editing. The transcriptionist still captures every word said on the recording, but edits out parts like filler words (ums, ahs, ers, etc.), ambient sounds and non-verbal communication as well as false starts (incomplete sentences), repetitions, and grammatical errors. Some minor paraphrasing may also be done without changing the meaning of what is being said; however, it does not ever mean to reword what was said! Transcription services need to be very careful to still type exactly what is said when doing modified verbatim and not to reword or rephrase any of the speech as they might for professional transcription.
Another issue to consider when choosing a style of transcription you need is the overall quality of the audio.
Verbatim Style and it’s connection to audio quality:
Several factors can add to the difficulty of transcribing an accurate verbatim transcript. These include:
- Audios with background noise or overall poor recording quality
- Audios with three or more speakers
- Audios where the speakers are difficult to hear or very loud
- Recordings where the speakers have thick accents
- Audios that require time-stamps at places where the speakers could not be understood
- Audios that require the transcriptionist to look up or verify data such as medical terms, cities, streets, or names
So once you’ve determined what kind of transcription best serves your needs, the next step is finding a qualified transcriptionist and that’s where the real challenge comes in. As you can see from the information above, Verbatim and Modified Verbatim transcription are the most challenging styles to transcribe and only transcriptionists specially trained in this style should be considered. Here’s why: We all have an “automatic editing ear” when we listen to human speech. Our editing ear listens to a speaker and then edits out extraneous words and sounds and searches for the basic or true meaning in what the person is saying. This might even include modifying words the speaker says to fit our own perspective and understanding.
The same thing happens for the transcriptionist, even an experienced one, unless they’ve been trained specifically to override the tendency to edit! Verbatim style transcription is a skill that is learned and then needs to be practiced on a regular basis, otherwise the skill diminishes. Here’s an interesting fact: A skilled legal or medical transcriptionist might not make a good verbatim transcriptionist because the skill set is different.
At Transcription Express, we specialize in Verbatim and Modified Verbatim transcription. To ensure our transcriptionists produce high quality documents, designed to our client’s unique verbatim style requirements, each transcriptionist who works with us spends a week with us in an “Art of Verbatim Style” training class conducted at our on-site training lab. By doing this, we can ensure each transcriptionist has overcome the desire to edit what he or she hears and can produce an accurate Verbatim style document. Taking it one step further, our goal is for all verbatim documents produced by our transcriptionists to be done exactly the same way using the same techniques. In this way, we ensure our clients receive accurate documents, done to their specifications, no matter who may have transcribed it. And we don’t stop there! Transcripts submitted by each transcriptionist are regularly and routinely checked for adherence to our verbatim guidelines to ensure that their “editing ear” doesn’t start creeping back into their transcripts.