This blog is part of a series on transcription. If you haven’t read the other blogs in this series, make sure to check out the summary page for a listing of all transcription blogs. Thanks!
Legal and general transcription are even less prone to VR (voice recognition) technology than MT work. General transcription usually consists of transcribing many different people every single day, which VR technology is in no way ready to tackle. I have transcribed focus groups talking about whatever random topic they were assigned (cell phones, schooling and teachers, ant killing chemicals,) and I had great difficulty understanding people because they were talking over each other, or they were turned away from the mike and the voices weren’t picked up very well. Ambient noises can also be a problem: I remember one dictation where a siren from an ambulance came blaring in very loudly, and the people didn’t pause for a moment. They could still hear each other, and they kept talking. I couldn’t hear a thing except that blasted siren. And I have a (mostly) functioning brain! If VR technology cannot understand one person who talks slowly and clearly, then it hasn’t got a prayer when it comes to focus groups.
Legal transcription is in the same boat: All of those affidavits by different witnesses, meetings held where several people are talking all at once…VR is in no way ready to tackle this kind of work. So no, general and legal transcriptionists are not “going the way of dinosaurs” and I would say anyone who believes that has not studied the field in any depth at all.
Make sure to read on to my blog about the hazards of the transcription field.