Transcribing today seems like a very simple task considering that there are automatic transcription software options that do practically all the work.
However, there are many fields, clients, and companies that still need professional transcriptionists to carry out work that requires maximum understanding and saves them time from correcting or editing the transcriptions themselves.
Manual transcription often involves making mistakes of varying severity. Many are small and go unnoticed, but others ruin the entire transcript and result in a poor-quality job that has to be redone from scratch.
In this post, we tell you the main mistakes to avoid when transcribing and how to fix them to grow as a transcriptionist and attract more and better clients.help
Below are the main mistakes you must avoid at all costs when transcribing audio to text.
Whether you're a freelancer or working for a company or organization, it’s crucial to first understand what the client or your supervisor is asking for.
First, be clear on what type of transcription is needed—verbatim, clean, or edited. Depending on the request, you’ll need to include all elements, some of them, or only the most important ones.
From there, the client might ask you to consider other things, like keeping everything in one language when multiple are spoken, abbreviating certain words, or translating specific slang or regional expressions.
Once you have the guidelines clear, it's time to start transcribing—not before!
This mistake of not aligning with what’s requested often leads to redoing transcripts multiple times, resulting in a loss of time and money.
You start transcribing an audio file and it turns out to be a technical subject you’re unfamiliar with, which you initially thought was about something else.
In many fields, understanding the context is necessary to make the transcription accurate. To do this, it’s important to know what the audio is about, which concepts or terminology are used and recurring, so you can do a proper job.
Not having a prior idea of the audio’s general context can lead to a terrible transcription.
Imagine the audio is of a person playing two different characters at once, talking to themselves. If you don't know that, you could make obvious mistakes when attributing the dialogue.
Making typing mistakes, swapping letters, or worse, writing a clearly known word with spelling errors, can be fatal errors in the eyes of your clients or employer.
Mishearing a word can happen, but misspelling something widely known is inexcusable.
So, it’s important to review everything you transcribe even if it takes a little longer.
You can rely on autocorrect tools to a certain extent—they may catch some typos but can also mistakenly approve words that don’t make sense in context.
It will often happen that you think you hear a word that repeats throughout the audio, but it turns out not to be the word you thought.
This leads to repeatedly miswriting that word, turning a small mistake into one that ruins the whole transcript.
The same happens when you hear the word correctly but type it incorrectly. This happens often and unfortunately also results in poor transcriptions.
Make sure you hear words clearly and write them correctly, checking their spelling when in doubt.
Misspelling names is another common mistake.
For example, confusing Jhon and John, Lesley and Leslie, Kate and Katy, etc.
This will result in needing to correct the name throughout the entire transcript.
Many times, you won’t know who’s speaking, and will try to figure it out by context or tone of voice. Sometimes there's not much you can do, but often, it’s a matter of paying closer attention and knowing the actual content.
This will help you interpret the context and deduce who’s speaking at each moment.
Unfortunately, it will sometimes be impossible to identify the speaker due to audio quality, speaker voice, background noise, etc.
Now, let’s move on to the most important part—how to avoid these mistakes and keep your clients happy.
Knowing what the client wants, what their business or profession is about, and understanding what they expect when receiving your transcription will save you many headaches.
You’ll meet their request exactly as asked, and it’ll also be easier to understand words and contexts during transcription, which would otherwise be hard without prior comments from the client.
Understanding this is the first step in avoiding problems.
Listening to the audio beforehand gives you great insight into what you’re going to transcribe.
A first listen is essential, though if it's a one-hour audio, it might not be feasible to listen to the whole thing upfront.
In such cases, just listen to the first few minutes to get an idea of the topic, the speakers, each voice, and the expected terminology.
If you hear a word and don’t know what it means or how it’s spelled—look it up online.
If someone’s name is mentioned and the person might be important, recognized, or searchable online—and you’re unsure of the spelling—look it up online.
If you need more context on the topic—look it up online.
This will speed up your transcription and improve its quality.
Upload your audio to an automatic transcription software like ScriptMe and receive a first draft that will get you through much of the work. 
Then, rename the speakers, fix transcription errors, and edit according to the client’s needs.
It can speed up your process by more than four times.
Good headphones, a good ergonomic keyboard, a good transcription foot pedal, a good monitor, a good chair, a good desk, and proper lighting are all necessary to transcribe a video or audio correctly.
Imagine sitting for 8 hours at a computer, with a small monitor, a faulty keyboard, and headphones with more interference than actual voices.
It would be a nightmare!
Set up a good workspace and let it all flow.
Having a checklist of everything you need to do and verify will help you keep your transcriptions systematic.
This will help you avoid many mistakes and get more and better assignments.
Mistakes are inevitable, but reducing them to almost zero is possible.
Manual transcription is still a highly demanded task across many industries and businesses.
Doing it manually often leads to several errors that, one way or another, lower the quality of your work and how the client perceives you.
That’s why you must do everything possible to minimize those errors.
Mistakes will still happen—nobody's perfect—but what separates a good transcriptionist from an excellent one is the speed and the number of errors made.
I hope this article has been helpful and that you can put these solutions into practice.
