Helpful Hints for Successful Transcripts!

Welcome to the Weekly Friendly Tips post! 

Written by fellow CrowdSurfers, these posts are published every Monday and will list the previous weeks most common errors and help with how to avoid making those errors in future tasks!

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Monday, October 17, 2016
Hi CrowdSurfers,

This week, the majority of errors I ran across in QC were related to consistency. When working an FTR task, consistency throughout the transcript is vital.

1st:
I ran into multiple instances where different transcribers had done their best with the spelling of a single name. As a result, the name was inconsistently spelled out  throughout the transcript. FTR workers should make sure it’s spelled correctly, or at the very least consistently, throughout.

For example:

  • one job had author Claudia Goldin’s name spelled as Goldman and Golden in different lines of the transcript.

Do your best to figure out what the name should be from context if it’s not on screen, and make sure that it’s spelled consistently throughout the FTR.

2nd:
Another big consistency related issue seems to be words with multiple accepted spellings.

For example:

  • third-party/third party, value-based/value based, and health care/healthcare.

An FTR consists of multiple transcription tasks stitched together. Different transcribers will prefer different accepted spellings. It’s our job as the FTR worker to use what is on screen for guidance, but if it isn’t on screen, choose a spelling and make sure that it’s spelled that way throughout the entire task.

3rd:

Numbers were also a big problem this week.

For Example:

  • Sentence with two common number errors “But hopefully that critical list is only 10% to 20% of the applications, not all three or four or 5,000 of the applications that you have available.”

If the speaker says, “ten to twenty percent” that should be transcribed as “10 to 20%.”

If the speaker says, “three or four or five thousand” that should be transcribed as “3 or 4 or 5,000.”

As stated in the Guidelines in Section Four- Numbers:

  • Use consistent formatting within sentences, use numerals (when at least one of the numbers is over 10) for quantities with related units, lists, or numbers with a statistical relationship.

4th:

And finally, software names. We’ve had a lot of software related tasks this week, guys. Always use Google to check on the spelling of software names if they aren’t on screen.

For example, I saw these misspellings left in FTR tasks this week:

  • GreenSock as green sock
  • TweenMax as tween Max
  • CodePen as code pen
  • ScrollMagic as scroll magic.

Remember, it’s up to us as FTR workers, who have access to much more of the media than transcribers, to treat the transcript as a whole and maintain consistent formatting and spelling throughout the task.

We want to make sure the clients’ receive accurate, high quality transcripts so they keep the work coming and keep our queues full!!

For more help with Full Text Review tasks, check out the links below: