TRANSCRIPTION SERVICES - STYLES AVAILABLE

We provide three types of transcription - Complete Verbatim, Intelligent Verbatim and Edited Transcript so you can decide which format is suitable for your needs. We've also developed specialised transcript styles for oral history transcription projects and focus group transcriptions. Please make your choice clear at the quotation stage to ensure that the correct price is given. Please email if you have a specific query.

Intelligent Verbatim Transcription
Our default transcription format, a popular client choice and the most cost effective service available.

This ensures a full, accurate transcript but omits all the 'ums', 'ahs', repetitions and verbal habits such as excessive use of 'you know' and 'kind of', unless they're relevant to the content. These meaningless fillers add nothing to the context of the transcript and take longer to transcribe. We believe it makes sense to cut all that out, but leave the rest exactly as spoken, including unfinished sentences, contractions and even incorrect grammar, which still retains the overall style of the person speaking.

Choosing Intelligent Verbatim ensure a much easier transcript to read, and significantly cuts down on transcription time. This type of transcript is commonly used for some one-to-one interviews, conferences, meetings, podcasts, webcasts and lectures, and a script style layout is used whereby each speaker is identified by initials where possible.

For interviews there may be a happy medium whereby you wish an interviewer's questions to be 'tidied' up and perhaps summarised, but the interviewee's responses to be left in full.

Complete Verbatim Transcription

We recognise that there are circumstances where you may require a transcript of absolutely everything said on a recording, such as interviews for legal purposes or for university qualitative analysis.

This includes every repetition, 'ums', 'ers', 'you knows' and instances where people make several attempts to start a sentence, or drift off in mid comment with no logical end to a sentence. It endeavours to capture the conversational 'style' of the person, plus any dialect patterns and emotions where applicable, such as laughter. It also includes all housekeeping type opening and closing remarks.

Clients need to be aware of the impact that this will have on transcription time and price - this is the most expensive and time consuming type of transcription available. Why pay for it if it really isn't necessary? It also makes for a very tedious 'read' when going through a transcript! Is it really necessary for how you'll be using the end transcript?

Edited Transcription

This transcript style is sometimes very useful for focus groups or conference organisers who need to provide a transcript of lectures, but don't need all the verbal quirks of every speaker.

This transcription format will take slightly longer to complete than Intelligent Verbatim but not as long as Complete Verbatim, and is priced accordingly.

Oral History Transcription projects have their own specialised requirements and our Intelligent Verbatim option can be adapted to include this at no extra cost.

We will include all audible expressions of identifiable emotion (laughter or tears), retain all dialect speech and accent patterns where decipherable, add interpretation (e.g. over-stressing a particular word) and emphasis (such as banging on the table to emphasise a point).

We will still leave out all redundant 'fillers' such as 'ums', 'you knows' etc unless relevant to the content. We are happy to discuss this with you and tweak it to your requirements. As with our Intelligent Verbatim, we don't correct grammar or alter speech patterns to retain the style of the person speaking.

Focus Group Transcription
We have developed several cost effective options for large focus groups in consultation with clients - please choose which is most appropriate for your needs. These options can also be used for multiple participant interviews, group meetings, roundtable discussions, teleconferences and vox pops.

The default transcript style for focus groups is Intelligent Verbatim whereby all the meaningless fillers such as 'ums', 'ahs', repetitions and verbal habits such as excessive use of 'you know' and 'kind of' are omitted, unless they're relevant to the content. We can adapt this style to reflect a client's need to identify participants at a focus group or to preserve their anonymity; the choice is yours. There are four options available as a 'top-up'.

1A. Individual speakers are not identified by name but different comments are listed on separate lines to ensure that each change of speaker is obvious. The moderator is also clearly marked. This ensures that you capture the content of each remark but without attributing it to a named speaker. This significantly reduces the time taken to transcribe. If participants have taken part in a focus group on the understanding that their contributions are anonymised, this is the easiest way to capture that.

1B. As for 1A above but we list comments as FS or MS only (female / male speakers).

Options 1A and 1B are costed as Intelligent Verbatim and are the most cost effective options.

2A. If individual speakers do need to be identified, we need a list of speakers' names and the order in which they speak. Otherwise, it will be impossible to identify accurately all the individuals, especially as we generally haven't heard their voices before! The longer we work with a particular client, the more familiar we become with the possible voices involved but the list of participants is still vital. Please view our Guidelines for Focus Groups page to see how best to produce such a voice 'map'.

2B. If we are not provided with any participant names, we will identify each speaker as FS1 or MS1 (female / male speakers). But even then, if voices are very similar, this will be a 'best guess' as to who is speaking at any given time. For example, if FS1 speaks at the beginning but then not again until near an hour later, it will necessitate going back and forth until we are confident that it is the same voice speaking. This obviously increases the transcription time enormously.

Options 2A and 2B are more expensive and costed as Complete Verbatim but transcribed as per Intelligent Verbatim to ensure that all the unnecessary 'ums', 'you knows' etc are removed as they're rarely necessary in a focus group transcription. 

3. We frequently provide summaries of the points raised without distinguishing between different speakers. We take each verbatim comment, turn it into more coherent summarised sentences or bullet points, and group all the different subject areas together. This option is costed as Edited Transcript.

FOCUS GROUP TRANSCRIPTION transcribed as Intelligent Verbatim style unless otherwise requested, with the following optional additions at no extra cost.
1A and 1B are costed as Intelligent Verbatim The prices listed on the Focus Group Transcription page are based on this style of transcript.	1A: Individual speakers are not identified by name, but different comments are listed on separate lines to ensure that each change of speaker is obvious. The moderator is also clearly marked.	1B: Individual speakers are not identified by name but listed as FS or MS only (female / male speakers). Different comments are listed on separate lines to ensure that each change of speaker is obvious. The moderator is also clearly marked.
2A and 2B are costed as Complete Verbatim Add 50p per audio minute to all digital recordings (25p discounted price). For audio tape formats, this can add from 1-3 hours to transcription times.	2A: Individual speakers are identified where possible - a list of speakers' names is needed and the order in which they speak.	2B: If we are not provided with any participant names, we will identify each speaker as FS1 or MS1 (female / male speakers).
3 is costed as Edited Transcription Add 25p per audio minute to all digital recordings (10p discounted price). For audio tape formats, this can add 1-2 hours to transcription times.	3: We frequently provide summaries of the points raised without distinguishing between different speakers. We take each verbatim comment, turn it into more coherent summarised sentences or bullet points, and group all the different subject areas together.