Transcription help? (Preferably from people with experience.)

Can I ask what sort of files you’re transcribing or will be required to transcribe? I have interviews transcribed. I don’t want details about background noise transcribed. I want the preamble discussion between myself and the interviewee, the questions I asked and the responses they gave. I’d want the post-interview discussion too. The interview content needs to be transcribed verbatim. Nothing annoys me more than checking a transcript only to find the transcriber has not accurately typed back the content. I have to include those quotes in my work and ethically, they have to be spot on.

The fact that you can hear a fridge in the background or someone asking for the door to be closed would be irrelevant to my needs. I’d expect the company to let you know if they needed additional details such as that. What you include would depend on the content you’re transcribing.

I should add, the reason I ask what it is you’re transcribing is because in some situations you might want such detail. For instance, if you were asked to record legal interviews. Say a police interview. They might want information about people entering or leaving the room. I can see such transcriptions requiring additional detail. I’m an academic. I just want the interview content verbatim.

@Earthbound_Misfit Thank you for the answer! The company does all kinds of transcriptions, but the test transcription sounds like a meeting. I think, based on what you just said and also based on the fact that they didn’t get more specific, I’ll just leave it out. I only have little prior experience with transcription, but I wanted to make sure before I submitted my application.

What you could do, is put such detail in square brackets. [John Smith left room]. I would send back a note with the transcript explaining you were unsure whether the company would want to know that someone had left the room and so you have included such detail in square brackets. What they’ll really want to see is that you can be accurate.

I paid someone to transcribe some important interviews and when I listened to them back, she had paraphrased some content. I can’t use that. If someone says blah blah de blah, and the point they made is important to me and I want to use a direct quote, I have to know that my transcript shows the accurate quote. So, so frustrating to now have to go back and listen to every transcript and fix it up. I won’t ever use that person again. I have another transcriber who is fabulous. She charges more, but she completes the work in half the time. So it doesn’t cost me more.

The door closing in the clip was probably there intentionally to see how much attention to detail you have. I’m doubting you were just sent some random clip.

The person reading the transcript in the future can simply ignore the comment in the transcript. But it might be a big deal if it isn’t in there. For example, say you are a lawyer and it is important that you know a person wasn’t present in a meeting when shady shit went down.

FYI, @DrasticDreamer, I do transcribing for a client and use a terrifc Web app called Transcription. It’s free to try for 30 days, only $39 for lifetime use, and both Mac and Windows friendly. Check it out.

I agree completely with @Earthbound_Misfit and @johnpowell. I would leave it in brackets and make a note when I submit it.

Edited to add: I’ve done medical transcription, where such a detail would be ignored. But I would be interested in how a potential new hire would handle such a situation. I think it is important to note that you noticed the scenario that you were unsure of how to handle, you transcribed the “side comment and noise”, marked it with brackets, and are informing them by email/note.