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  1. #1
    Old Merits
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    Question for people who do interviews that require transcriptions

    Greetings,

    I've recently been assigned to a client of ours who has us transcribe various audio records of interviews related to ongoing investigations.

    I'm fairly sure I recall some people on BG being involved in similar procedings, so if possible, could someone provide me with some insight into what would be required of both the interviewee and the interviewer in regard to speaking clearly?

    Currently, I'm checking a transcription with an unusually high amount of phrases being marked as "inaudible", which I'm not entirely sure would be acceptable for the client. I listened to the parts myself (total of about 150 for an interview of about 5 hours) and, at least to me, they're not clear enough to be transcribe them without having to guess, if at all.

    My question would be whether this would be the usual procedure in this case or if we'd definitely need someone who can make sense of what is being said.

    I'm fairly sure that expectations regarding this probably vary based on the client, but I'd like to hear what would be the most common one.

    Thank you in advance for any help!

  2. #2
    The Shitlord
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    I would imagine recordings are much like phones, so just act like you're on the phone with a poor connection talking to a client. speak clearly, enunciate, don't rush, and use professional word choice. avoid colloquialisms, etc.

    I spend all day on the phone with people and there are 2 main reasons I cant understand people: phone connection is bad, and more often, they're not speaking clearly. accents and such are much easier if the person is enunciating and not rushing themselves.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by BaneTheBrawler View Post
    I would imagine recordings are much like phones, so just act like you're on the phone with a poor connection talking to a client. speak clearly, enunciate, don't rush, and use professional word choice. avoid colloquialisms, etc.

    I spend all day on the phone with people and there are 2 main reasons I cant understand people: phone connection is bad, and more often, they're not speaking clearly. accents and such are much easier if the person is enunciating and not rushing themselves.
    Ah, sorry, might have been a bit ambiguous, but thanks for your input!

    The interviews aren't conducted by us, we only get the records and need to transcribe them. My question is basically to how great an extent the client can/should be held accountable for inaudible parts or rather, how hard is the transcriber usually expected to try to make sense of the muffled, strongly accentuated utterings of an interviewee from central Africa who speaks English as second language.

  4. #4
    The Shitlord
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    oh I see. if you can cross-check the muffled parts with other words you CAN make out that might help, it usually takes a little bit for my ear to attune to someone's accent and speaking conditions, but i'd imagine that's something your agents are used to as well, so beyond that idk.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by BaneTheBrawler View Post
    oh I see. if you can cross-check the muffled parts with other words you CAN make out that might help, it usually takes a little bit for my ear to attune to someone's accent and speaking conditions, but i'd imagine that's something your agents are used to as well, so beyond that idk.
    Turns out that our guys are the issue, actually; I repeatedly pointed out to them that they can safely assume that chief-investigators of international organizations are probably capable of speaking proper English, yet they left passages that amounted to gibberish largely untouched even though I instructed them to do otherwise since it should be safe to assume that our staff is wrong, not the investigator and that they should go the extra mile and listen closely if they come across such parts.

    Checked some passages myself and yes, our guys were in the wrong, which they refuse to admit. Now I'll have to double-check everything until we can replace the problematic guys, great.

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