Transcription
Transcription
The process of converting spoken audio or video into written text data.
In Simple Terms
Transcription is the process of turning the spoken audio from a recording or video into written text data. It's used for things like putting together meeting minutes or creating subtitles for videos. There are two main approaches: doing it by hand, listening to the audio and typing it out, or letting AI-powered speech recognition turn it into text automatically. It's also widely used in smartphone and computer apps.
Behind the Name
In the past, transcription work often meant copying down audio from cassette tapes by hand — a practice also referred to as "tape transcription".
Take a Closer Look!
Transcription is the work or technology of converting the human speech contained in an audio file or video into text data.
It's used whenever you want to preserve spoken content as written text, such as writing up interviews or creating meeting records.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to do transcription: manually by a person, or automatically by a computer using AI.
With the manual approach, someone replays the audio over and over while typing out what's said.
Automatic transcription, on the other hand, uses speech recognition technology to instantly analyze audio and convert it into text.
As AI technology has advanced, the accuracy of speech recognition has improved too.
Mistakes can still happen in noisy environments or when multiple people are talking at once, but automatic transcription still helps cut down on the time the work takes.
The resulting text can also be used for further data processing, like searching or summarizing.