Saturday, June 21, 2008

The Transcriptionist's Office

Hi, there.

I'm back. I just wrote a comment from my brother's blog about the gasoline price hike to around 60 pesos per liter. He wrote some issues about not buying from Petron or Caltex in June or not buying from Shell in July or something. All I know is that I made my comment there. He asked me to.

It wasn't a hard thing to do. I actually enjoyed it. I explained to people what I did for a living and where I work.

Well, I hope that people will get to read what I wrote even if my ending wasn't related to the body of my comment.

By the way, the title "The Transcriptionist's Office" will soon be a reality. I hope and pray when I start my own.

I'm a general transcriptionist, as I have said in my previous post. And I have big plans for this industry, I must say. I plan to stay long in this career since I've switched from being a writer to a transcriptionist.

Well, I guess, that's life. The inevitable happens.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The Transcriptionist is In

Hi there, bloggers!

I'm back after a hiatus of several months. I stopped blogging because I would rather work than blog.

Anyway, I would like to explain something. Most of the time people would ask me what a general transcriptionist is because that is my profession now. I've switched from a writer to a transcriptionist.

It's someone who would receive audio files online from clients and then he/she would download the file into his/her computer and then put it in Express Scribe so that he/she could easily hear the audio by using the function keys as start/stop/play/rewind. Others would opt for the foot pedal to control the audio.

Then as that is done, he/she would then have to open a Word file, then if there is a format needed, do the formatting for that client and then start the transcription.

Once the audio is ready, the person can start typing everything that is heard on the audio. Just make sure that what you hear is what you type and you have to know how to end the sentence, or where to put the commas, the quotations and the periods. Of course, don't forget to spell the words correctly. Guys, I mean this is just typing what you hear verbatim. But sometimes, the uhms and the ahs, the you knows are not included anymore. This is called the clean transcript.

You see, if only Filipinos could listen very well and have a good grasp of the English language, it would be easy to transcribe for people here and abroad for a fee. It's a very decent job and you can even do it at home as long as you have a broadband or DSL Cable connection for your research, yes, you have to do some research on terms like medical, architecture, IT, etc because those are important in the transcript. If you are a transcriptionist and you have poor spelling abilities, your client won't give you more stuff to do.

I'm lucky I studied in a good school, Immaculate Conception Academy in Greenhills way back in the 80s and it turned out that my English is fair or a little higher than that. I'm not saying I'm really that good, I still have a lot to learn as I go through the daily chores of transcribing.

But transcription is for everyone, whether you're a college student who wants to earn on the side, a housewife who has nothing to do during her free time, or an employee who wants to earn more for the family. It doesn't choose which profession you are in as long as you can understand English, that's fine.

There are tough accents to consider though. But it would be easy for you if you watch different movies every week and try to listen to their dialogues. You will get what I mean in due time. That's my training when I was a teenager. I didn't know I would end up as a transcriptionist, how do I know?

Well, for those of you who want to learn this job, better get your fingers ready because you would need to do a lot of typing, I mean typing fast but 98% accurate that is. You can type fast but your accuracy is just 80%, that's not enough. You have to aim higher. And you should type the correct way, the QWERTY way to make it easier for you. Or if you're used to your typing style, that's fine as long as you type accurately.

Well, so much for the transcription lesson. I hope you learned something today.

Nothing much is written about transcription in our country. I hope to start a forum about this one of these days.

Thank you and good luck.