What does it take to transcribe?
By rachelzwo
@rachelzwo (310)
United States
February 26, 2007 1:26pm CST
I applied for a job online to transcribe, thinking that all you had to do is type whatever was being said. I got sent a test in order to see if I was good enough for the job. And with this test were instructions. They asked me if I had a pedal and what other equipment I had in order to do the job. I have no idea what they are talking about. I've never transcribed before. Like I said, I thought all you did was type what was being said and all the equipment I needed was a keyboard and speakers. What the heck are they talking about a pedal and other equipment? What should I know about transcribing?
1 person likes this
3 responses
@gadituzair (985)
• Pakistan
26 Feb 07
Sorry buddy, but i also have heard of these terms for the first time and will surely wait and see what others have to say abt it!
Well i just wanna know how much fees you paid them, and what website it was?
Thanks.
@rachelzwo (310)
• United States
26 Feb 07
I didn't pay any fees at all. I got the job listing from workathomecareers.com
@royal52gens (5488)
• United States
26 Feb 07
I used to transcribe for a court reporter. I had a tape recorder, an excellent set of headphones and the foot pedal, a computer and a printer. You do not want a set of headphones that you would use for listening to music (stereo). You want mono.
The foot pedal is a device that connects to the tape recorder and it controls the speed of the tape. Many pedals have two or three sections. Right, Middle, and Left. Right makes the tape go backwards or back up. Middle proceeds at the set speed. Left fast forwards the tape. The tape recorder is also not one you pick up at Wal-Mart. You want a tape player that has variable speed control.
There are times you need to go over and over the same section of tape to make out what the person(s) are saying so you can get it right. You also need to know how to punctuate broken english since humans do not speak the same as they write.
Your accuracy is paramount because the document you may be working on could very well go in front of a judge and errors are not tolerated. There is no guessing.
You will want to invest in many different kinds of dictionaries, word books, encyclopedias so you can make sure you are spelling everything correctly.
This can be a fun job. But you need to very detail oriented and you will want to hone your proofreading skills.
Good Luck to you.
@imsilver (1665)
• Canada
26 Feb 07
A pedal is just a little gizmo that sits under your desk. It hooks up to the tape recorder that hold the project you are transcribing (or maybe the computer in this day and age - I'm not sure). You step on it when you want to pause the tape for a bit to catch up and you can step on it to rewind and go back to catch a word you missed. I'm not sure what other equipment you'd need. The pedal and the tape recorder is all I used when I did transcribing in an office setting many many years ago.
