How to Transcribe an Interview: A Complete Guide to Interview Transcription

Interview Transcription: learn how to transcribe an interview with our easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to interview transcribing. Let’s begin.

What is a transcript of an interview?

An interview transcript is a written or text version of a completed verbal interview. Converting an audio or video recording of a conversation to text word for word is a brief description of the transcription process.

Transcribing interviews means …

Transcribing interviews is converting speech from audio or video recording to written record word for word.

Overview of how to transcribe an interview:

If you’re looking for ways to write a successful interview transcript, these steps will guide you through transcribing interviews:

1. Listen to the full audio/video recording.
2. Outline the time you’ll need to transcribe it.
3. Select tools to help with the transcription process.
4. Write the first draft of the interview transcript.
5. Proofread your draft rigorously to polish it.
6. Format the transcript in the required format.

How does transcribing help?

Transcribing interviews helps in performing analysis, helps you mine data, and makes interviews accessible.

The benefits of writing an interview transcript

Transcribing interviews reaps many benefits for businesses to utilize in their favour. Though there are numerous benefits, the following are the major benefits of writing a transcript of the interview:

Captures imperceptible details

A little snap in attention because something catches your eyes keeps you unaware of imperceptible details hidden in the interview. As a result, details are easily lost. You may not even recall all the answers given to the questions, no matter how important. Interview transcripts, on the other hand, capture even the minutest detail so that you revisit all the information and data later.

Accessible to other team members

Generally, interviews and information therein, remain mostly confined to few individuals. Your interviewer may have access to its content, not other team members. That kind of creates an information vacuum. But not anymore, with interview transcription you can make the same interview accessible to other members of your organisation as part of the decision making process. Moreover, it’s much easier to email copies of transcripts than the audio/video file and is easier to sift through and review.

Direct documentation of the interview

Converting the interviews into a document makes the entire conversation available for detailed examination. Consequently, you can better understand its content and draw further insights from it.

Saves valuable time

Transcribing interviews collects and streamlines all the necessary information for further review later in the day. You can haul from transcripts, insights, data to guide you through when you dig into the interview later. So, transcribing definitely saves you plenty of time because sifting through it for details, information, and notes is really easier than going through the audio/video interview.

Interview transcription in 6 steps:

Step 1. Listen to the full audio/video recording.

How do you know which method of transcription to deploy to transcribe a recording? How to deal with complex recordings with a number of speakers? Can an audio-to-text converter handle the complexity of your transcription project? Or for that matter, do you have the linguistic expertise and attention to detail to do it yourself? 

These are some of the questions you might want to ask yourself before undertaking transcription on your own. And for the most part, the answers lie in listening to the audio/video recording in full, I mean from beginning to the end in one sitting. 

When you do so, three things should guide your decision pertaining to whether you can do justice to it if you chose to transcribe it yourself. The three things are:

• The number of speakers in the recording 
• The length of the audio/video recording
• Technical terminology used in the recording

The more the number of speakers, the more difficult it gets to write a transcription of the interview. The same holds for the length of recording, its complexity manifolds with an increment of every second. It gets difficult to keep track of speakers and the conversation they’re having. Then there’s technical terminology. Every profession, sector, and industry has its set of unique terms, words, phrases that only an expert and professional transcriptionist can pick up. 

Keeping this in mind, you may not want to risk the quality and accuracy of the interview transcript by doing it yourself. The best thing to do is to outsource it to a professional transcription agency that has a workforce in the form of qualified transcribers to do it for you.

Who’s the Professional Transcriptionist? How to Identify One?

A professional transcriptionist is a qualified, skilled, and experienced linguist with years of experience transcribing interviews. They’ve identifiable traits that may help you identify and choose one. Such transcriptionists are:

• Trained and qualified with eye for detail.
• Capable of transcribing complex recordings.
• Expert in linguistic skills with understanding of multiple accents.
• Experienced enough to pick up on words.
• Familiar with industry-specific glossary of terms.

At Locate Translate, we’ve got talented linguists working with us to help you with English to English transcription of audio/video recordings, or Arabic to English transcription.

Doing Transcript from Foreign Language to English

Things get more complicated when you’re transcribing from another language to English. If the recording you’ve is in foreign language, say French, and you want it transcribed into English, ask yourself whether or not you’ve the requisite language skills in source as well as the target language.

Again, at Locate Translate, we’ve qualified native linguists to carry out transcription from 30+ languages to English. Want us to do the transcription, contact us now!

Step 2. Outline the time you’ll need to transcribe it.

Outlining how much time you can afford to allocate to transcribing interviews is pretty difficult to figure out if you’re not a professional transcriber. Consequently, you may end up spending more time, yet accomplishing very little. It certainly could be a loss to your business. 

That’s why Locate Translate is better positioned to professionally transcribe your recordings in record time. We can transcribe recordings of any length within stipulated time because our professionals have impeccable typing speed and a good sense of transcription format. Shortest to say, they know exactly what they’re doing, how to do it.

Step 3. Select tools to help with the transcription process.

To streamline the transcription process and make it easy, selecting the right set of tools is imperative. Professional transcribers have access to all sorts of tools pertinent to writing an interview transcription. They know how to put such tools to their maximum use so as to bring efficiency to the interview transcription. 

That includes noise-cancelling headphones, Google Docs to transcribe audio files, audio player, Word processor, etc. These are some of the tools human transcriptionists use, but not the only ones. That doesn’t mean you can use transcription tools unaided by professional transcribers to write an interview transcript.  

You may choose to do so but it will be riven by errors. Even if you download a free transcription audio player, then you must also learn how to operate it. Without knowing where to pause, when to rewind, which portion to fast-forward, how to use hot-keys, how to operate the time-coding function, can you really use it efficiently? Not necessarily! Therefore, it’s better to let experts do it while you do what you do best, running the business.

Step 4. Write the first draft of the interview transcript.

With all the necessary transcription tools at your disposal, you can start writing the first draft of the interview transcript. But you must remember that writing an interview transcript is not easy at all. It demands linguistic accuracy and experience to pick on words. 

There are words that you cannot translate, sometimes complex terminology is involved that makes transcribing the recordings quite difficult for non-professionals. You can begin by transcribing in short intervals but that’s time-consuming, and businesses don’t have much time to allocate to the transcription project. Outsourcing it to the transcription agency will save you time and labour, which is a win-win for any business!

Step 5. Proofread your draft rigorously to polish it.

The first draft is never perfect. You have to polish it over and again to glean valuable insights from it. You must know what to choose and what to leave.  Doing so entails professional expertise. Sometimes speakers have different accents, though they speak the same language. For a transcriber, it’s necessary to have understanding and mastery of different accents in order to be able to pick on words. That also entails attention to detail. An ability to identify errors. Professional transcribers can polish it, make it more insightful and accurate for reading by other team members.

Step 6. Format the transcript in the required format.

At this stage, you must know what’s the right format for your transcript. Formatting properly your transcript means making it easier for readers to decipher imperceptible details and meanings hidden in the recording. The kind of font to use, subheadings, paragraphs, etc. may enhance the utility of your transcript if you know how to use it.

Important Things to Remember When Interview Transcribing

Interview transcribing isn’t an easy task. On the contrary, it’s a complicated, time-consuming, and labor-intensive process. One that demands skills of the highest level, mastery of language, terminology, and experience in different industries. Some of the important things you should remember when transcribing interviews include:

• Transcription has different types: Full-Verbatim Transcription, Intelligent Verbatim Transcription, Detailed Notes Transcription. Depending on your requirements choose the one that  best fits your project.

• Transcription from foreign language to English demands impeccable language skills in both the target and source language. You need to have the qualification and skills to undertake such transcription.

• Transcription varies from one sector to another. Transcription in market research may not look the same as in healthcare, legal, or finance sectors. To have industry-specific knowledge and experience is therefore imperative for transcriptionists. Locate Translate assigns domain experts and native linguists to carry out interview transcriptions. 

The most important thing to remember is that one person must do the whole transcription so that there is a natural flow in the written transcript. Assigning different people may result in the loss of meaning.

Tips to Transcribe an Interview

Like I said before, transcribing an interview is a complex task. All sorts of skills, linguistic, listening, editing, proofreading, typing, etc. are required to write an interview transcript. Following these tips might help you transcribe your verbal interviews into text with accuracy and help you draw more information and insights out of your interviews. 

Here are some of the tips that may help you transcribe an interview more accurately.

• Note down the data and time, and location of the interview. Write interviewer’s and interviewee’s names at the earliest so that you know who’s speaking to whom.
• Listen to the full recording once to grasp the overall contextual meaning of the tape and its content. 
• Use tools like foot pedals for question-answer interviews to quickly stop and start your tape handsfree. 
• Listen carefully, small sections at a time,  to the recording and start typing out the transcript interview. Repeat the recording if you feel stuck for meaning.
• Bad audio quality may blur some words. Read through the entire conversation to make sense of words not very clear. Of course, you can guess their meanings, but do refer to the original source as well.
• Listen through the recording again after you finish the first draft. Make sure you’ve missed out nothing, edit wherever necessary. It’s the stage to do corrections.
• Do the editing, grammar check, replace abbreviations with full words and work out punctuations in the final copy.
• Remove verbal tics and fillers if they’re unnecessary and feature too often to make the final copy distraction free and ensure natural textual flow.  [Verbal tics include “I mean”, “you know” etc. Fillers include ‘um’, ‘uh’ etc.]
• Always do the final spelling check before handing the interview transcript for publication or perusal of team members.

How to Transcribe an Interview: Different Transcription Methods

Full-Verbatim Transcription –  In this interview writing, the interview script is detailed with every word included in the text transcript. All the pauses the speaker may have taken, including verbal tics, such as repetition, stuttering, coughing, filler words, etc. feature in the interview written down.

Intelligent Verbatim Transcription – This type of transcript is more clean and refined as it’s done on a word-for-word basis. Refined in the sense that all the noise, unwanted extras that have got nothing to do with the actual audio, verbal tics, etc. such extraneous things are removed from the full-verbatim script. That’s the reason it’s easier to read compared to full-verbatim.

Detailed Notes Transcription – In this transcription process the whole interview is converted into bits of detailed notes with all the information gleaned from the audio file into text format. It’s to remember, however, that these aren’t randomized notes scribed haphazardly, but carefully gathered information, which is easier to sift through.

Given the complex and time-consuming nature of the transcription process, and no matter how lucidly we explain its workings and steps to follow, you may at some point want to outsource your transcription projects. For that, you may need the support of a reputable transcription agency if you want to achieve your objectives in record-time and with unmatched accuracy. In that case, we’re proud to introduce ourselves as one of the UK’s trusted full-service language solutions providers. At Locate Translate, we specialise in providing businesses, market research agencies, healthcare professionals, law firms, media houses top-quality transcription services and English to English transcription services.

Should you need any help with transcription or want us to explain how transcription works in a more detailed manner, feel free to contact at hello@locatetranslate.co.uk, or call us at +44 208 609 4852 . You can also fill our contact form. Let us know your requirements, we will happily get back to you within 30 minutes to provide assistance with interview transcripts.

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