What Is a Transcriptionist and What Do They Do?

A huge amount of information today lives in audio and video: interviews, podcasts, lectures, webinars, calls and live streams. But working with text is far more convenient — you can search it, edit it, publish it and analyse it.

That is exactly why transcription — turning audio or video into text — has become so popular.

In this article we will cover:

• what transcription is
• who a transcriptionist is
• where audio transcription is used
• the main types of transcription
• how to convert audio to text automatically and fast

What is transcription

Transcription is the process of converting spoken words from audio or video into a written format.

Put simply: you record a conversation, an interview or a lecture, and then turn that recording into text.

It can be:

• an interview transcript
• a podcast transcription
• a lecture turned into text
• a transcript of calls
• subtitles for a video

Transcription can be done manually by a person or automatically with speech-recognition services.

Who is a transcriptionist

A transcriptionist is a specialist who turns an audio or video recording into text. Their job is to listen carefully to the recording and accurately capture everything that was said.

Depending on the task, the text can be:

Verbatim

Pauses, filler sounds and speech quirks are all preserved.

Example:

"Well… uhh… I think it's… possibly."

Edited

Repetitions and filler words are removed.

Example:

"I think it's possible."

What a transcriptionist does

A transcriptionist's work involves several kinds of tasks.

Transcribing interviews and podcasts

Journalists and bloggers turn recorded conversations into text for their publications.

Transcribing lectures and webinars

Education platforms often publish text versions of their lectures.

Creating subtitles for video

The text is synchronised with the video and used as subtitles. See video to text for how this works in practice.

Transcribing meetings and calls

Companies turn recordings of meetings into text for analysis and reporting.

Working with specialised material

Medicine, law and science all demand accurate transcription of technical terminology.

Where transcription is used

Converting audio to text is now used in almost every field.

Media and journalism

• interviews
• podcasts
• talks
• conferences

Education

• lectures
• online courses
• seminars

Business

• meetings
• candidate interviews
• customer calls

Law

• court hearings
• hearing records
• transcripts of negotiations

Blogging and video

A text version of a video helps you:

• improve SEO
• create articles from video
• produce subtitles

The main types of transcription

There are several formats for transcribing audio.

Verbatim transcription

It captures:

• pauses
• emotions
• filler words
• repetitions

Used in:

• legal practice
• academic research
• journalism

Clean (intelligent) transcription

The text is stripped of conversational clutter and becomes easy to read.

Suitable for:

• articles
• blogs
• educational material

Condensed transcription

This is a short summary of what the recording contains.

Used in:

• business reports
• meeting analytics
• research projects

Transcription for subtitles

This additionally includes:

• timecodes
• synchronisation with the video
• text adapted for reading on screen

How to convert audio to text quickly

Transcription used to be done only by hand, and it took a great deal of time.

Today people increasingly rely on automatic speech-recognition services.

They let you:

• upload audio or video
• get the text automatically
• edit the result

This speeds up the transcription process by 10–20 times. You can even transcribe speech straight from a browser.

Online transcription services

If you need to turn a recording into text quickly, the easiest option is a dedicated service.

For example, Any2Text lets you:

• transcribe audio and video automatically
• turn recordings into text in a few minutes
• work with podcasts, interviews, lectures and calls

It runs on Whisper, one of the most accurate open speech-recognition models from OpenAI, and exports to SRT, DOCX, XLSX or TXT. It handles common formats such as MP3, MP4, M4A, WAV, MKV, MOV, AVI, FLV, OGG, AAC, AIFF and AMR.

The service is a good fit for:

• journalists
• bloggers
• students
• researchers
• businesses

Browse the full set of transcription tools to find the right one for your files.

In summary

Transcription is an essential tool for working with audio and video content.

It helps you:

• turn recordings into convenient text
• create subtitles
• publish interviews and lectures
• analyse meetings and calls

This once required the work of a transcriptionist, but today most of the job can be automated with speech-recognition services.

If you need to convert audio or video to text quickly, give Any2Text a try.