TRANSCRIPTION SOFTWARE

Some transcription companies and businesses depend heavily on transcription (corporate transcription, legal transcription, insurance transcription, financial transcription, media transcription …), and have started using Voice recognition software (VRS), computer software that transcribes digital voice recordings without the need for typing and dictation services of transcriptionists. If your business is trying to determine whether to use VRS, consider the following points:

• Time Factor: VRS takes time away from high-level employees and executives. Using it entails continually ‘retraining’ the program, which is very sensitive to changing speech patterns, different accents, and does not recognize many words and names.
  
• Clarity of Recording: Non-verbal noises that commonly exist in the dictation process and in business conferences seriously affect the functioning of VRS.
  
• Linguistic Factor: VRS will type what you say – and the language will appear unstructured. While poor speech habits complicate the transcription process for human transcriptionists too, a transcriptionist is able to mark transcripts as unintelligible, but VRS will transcribe the unintelligible word(s) from the existing database of “learned” language, producing meaningless sentences.
  
• Formatting: Part of a professional transcriptionist’s work is to format final business transcripts according to the client’s specifications. Most VRS do not perform this function

It is true that VRS has improved steadily over the past two decades, and the most recent versions of this transcription software claim to be nearly as accurate as traditional dictation and transcription services. Transcription software is certainly going to become more sophisticated, and it may even eventually replace certain subsets of the process of transcription, but the increased use of VRS has not eliminated the need for transcriptionists. On the contrary, it seems to have increased the demand for experienced professional transcriptionists. This is especially true for what is known as “Back-End Voice Recognition” where dictations are made into a digital dictation system and both the draft document produced by the VRS and the original voice file are sent to specialized transcriptionists who must edit the draft and finalize the transcript.

The shortcomings of medical transcription software mean that transcriptionists using it must have highly-developed editing skills. Listening and strong keyboard skills remain essential too, because transcriptionists listen to the recorded content and compare it to the VRS draft. Today, many experienced business transcriptionists and financial transcriptionists spend more time editing draft-quality documents – produced by inexperienced transcriptionists, by VRS and, more recently, by offshore transcriptionists.

While Transcriptionnorthcarolina.com can certainly meet all of your digital transcription needs, we do not rely solely on transcription software in completing transcription projects. We believe that there will always be a need for human transcriptionists to ensure quality control of transcripts, dictation and typing services. Only with the continued support of expert (human) professional transcriptionists to manage the process of transcription, can we honor our accuracy guarantee on all our transcription, dictation and typing services. Transcriptionnorthcarolina.com has built a reputation in the transcription industry in the U.S. as well as in Canada , Australia and the U.K. , and we will continue to rely on our expert staff of human transcriptionists to provide its clients with the premium-quality accurate transcription and dictation services they have come to expect.