[Ernest As]

Given how painful transcribing audio is, people repeatedly ask us why there is still no software that can automatically take an audio and spit out its transcribed text with good accuracy. Now, it’s not entirely true that there is no such software – there are many, but they don’t help in transcribing real-world audio which typically involves handling multiple voices and all kinds of background noises.

Everybody has got their own style of speaking

Training a machine to recognize human voice has proven to be very difficult due to the variations in how people speak a particular language. Despite being the most widely spoken language, English itself sounds considerably different in various parts of the world.

Even if everyone spoke a language the exact same way, there is still the added difficulty of training the system for different voices – from young to old to male to female to hoarse to soft to – you get the drift. Even the same person tends to speak differently in different situations, for example, during a moment of excitement or a bout of cold. Let’s not also forget that some people speak faster, while others speak slower, with lots of ums, ers and uhs, which aren’t even part of any spoken language! Arriving at a speech model that can handle all these variations (like humans do) is really tricky.

So, are we stuck?

Based upon what I’ve read, and my experience, it takes a minimum of 4-5 hours to transcribe 1 hour of digitally recorded interviews. Now the real question is, what’s your time worth?

Transcription process takes precision and accuracy, commitment and dedication, focus and patience..

My suggestion is to use one of transcription services like https://gotranscript.com

They are used by Harward, Stanford.. The fact that such top universities trust with their transcripts proves quality credentials.