TypeOlogy transcription cooperative

That Thing About Accents

TypeOlogy member Howard David Ingham tackles one of our most frequently asked frequently asked questions…

If you’ve been through the TypeOlogy site and read our FAQ (and obviously you’ve read our FAQ), you will have seen some of the variables that affect the pricing of the transcriptions we do. A large number of speakers, for example, or a poor quality sound file will influence the cost of work, as you might expect. The one that has inspired the most conversation among our clients, freelancers and members, however, is the presence of speakers with accents that are difficult to parse.

That’s not surprising! It’s the one that needs the most explanation. And it’s honestly the one that we’ve had to think the hardest about.

OK, it’s a simple enough principle to begin with: if the typist struggles with the accent of the person talking, they’re going to find it harder to finish the transcript and it’s going to take them longer. And they need to be compensated fairly for their time.

But wait. Isn’t that a bit… discriminatory?

This is the part where I say, “Yeah, maybe?”

It’s a sticky question, because we have to admit that accents aren’t just a neutral characteristic of a person’s speech, they’re also a marker of nationality, social class, ethnic identity and other things. Generally, people who are told that they have impenetrable accents tend to be poor and/or non-white and/or not a first-language English speaker. Sometimes those accents place them in a community, supply them with an identity.

Accents are often used as a way to exclude people, and accusing a person of impenetrability can be a bad-faith way to make their lives more difficult. I’m reminded of my own experience here, of how as a teenager I expunged my regional accent to hide the fact that I was from a deprived social background, and to reduce the flak I kept getting from my significantly more privileged peers. Years later I would return to my hometown and find that local people I met were unable to believe that I was born there. In losing my accent, I lost my identity. In some ways, I deprived myself of a home.

Another way that people with strong local/ethnic/working-class accents get punished is how they get gatekept out of things, because people in the “default” don’t understand them, aren’t willing to go to the extra effort of understanding them, or penalise them for going to that effort.

And the thing about marginalised identities – and one of the lovely things about working for TypeOlogy is how we primarily employ people with marginalised identities – is that having one doesn’t stop you being prejudiced against other people. You don’t get points for your own experience of marginalisation (no matter what the DWP might think).

As an organisation committed to those co-operative principles of equity, equality, honesty, openness and social responsibility, we have to grapple with this question. And in the last couple of months, we’ve talked about it quite a bit.

The accents people give a pass to (and why we don’t)

One really important thing to note is that quite a few people we’ve transcribed who our typists have found a bit hard to parse don’t have the sort of accent that is normally counted as marginalised. It’s just that no one notices when someone is hard to understand and they’re wealthy. Upper-class British accents are a classic example of this. Hardly anyone ever calls out members of the aristocracy for being really hard to understand. This is because they’re rich and powerful.

But does the size of a person’s hedge fund really make it easier to transcribe someone? No. No, it does not. We’ve had transcripts like that, and we have charged the increased rate for them, because they’re still harder to listen to.

(Yes, if you’re old enough to remember The Fast Show, that means you’re as old as me and I’m sorry)

Wait a minute, though, who’s actually getting discriminated against?

The thing about a discriminatory act is that it’s directional, an action performed against a person. But most of the time, if not all of the time, we’re not hired by the interviewees. We’re being paid by the interviewers (or the institutions they work for) and often they’re not the ones with the difficult-to-parse accents. We’re simply given a file to transcribe, which we do, and then we invoice the client or the client’s institution, and that invoice depends on the difficulty of the work done. We’re not communicating with the interviewees most of the time.

This brings up the point that our commitment to equity also translates into a commitment to compensating our typists for their work. Our typists, both members and freelancers, really do put in the effort to understand, and to provide the best and most accurate transcripts a professional can.

Occasionally, we all receive a file that for whatever reason we have to work harder to interpret. And the key is working harder. Our typists have a commitment to come to the work we do with no presuppositions as to who’s talking, but if it’s taking longer, we’re going to pay them more.

And then there’s experience

Now a lot of this is down to the typist. Some of our typists find some accents a lot easier to handle than others, simply due to personal experience.

For instance, I’ve spent years living with international students, so I don’t particularly struggle with the accents of speakers from South and East Asia or central Africa. Unlike everyone else in the co-operative, however, I’ve never lived north of Swansea, so I struggle a bit with English accents from anywhere North of Birmingham, while most of my colleagues hear those pretty much every day. Other members of the co-op have a bit of a time handling accents from Wales (not a problem for me, obviously), and have much less trouble than me with, for example, American or European accents.

This is important for us to know and communicate with each other. Part of our conversation going forward has led us to now have documentation of who finds what accents easiest to transcribe, which means we can assign work effectively and more efficiently, according to everyone’s strengths.

Doing better

We will carry on trying to do better, and it’s a conversation we’re keen to continue. We’re always ready to talk about our rates, and we are willing to negotiate them, particularly if a project aligns with our ethical stance. For the time being, though, we charge for difficult to understand accents for the simple reason that our typists work harder to transcribe them. They do everything they can to make sure our clients’ interviewees are fairly represented in text. We return the favour by paying them fairly for their work.

Why Automated Transcripts Aren’t Less Work (Yet)

In the first of a new series, co-op member Howard David Ingham explains why we aren’t quite ready to submit to our robot overlords.

Are we worried that the growing availability of cheap AI speech-to-text software might put us out of a job?

You won’t be surprised that we’ve heard that one a lot recently.

Engineers have been working for a whopping 70 years to get a computer to write down what a person is saying without anyone else having to listen. It’d be interesting to get into why this is a thing and who’s paying for it (a big shout out to everyone listening at GCHQ, by the way). But let’s stick to the subject: AI transcription utilities, powered by machine learning, really are getting better and better. I can see a time in the near future when an AI transcription service might be as good as the “real thing.”

We’re in a world where you can even do it on your phone. In fact, I dictated that last paragraph on my phone while walking the dog, because I was curious to see how good it was. So are we old school transcribers going to go the way of the triceratops and the typesetter? The simple answer is: not for a while yet, and probably not entirely.

OK, then, so AI isn’t going to put us out of a job. So it’s going to make our jobs easier, right? Well, no, that’s not really true either.

Let’s look more closely at both of those questions.

Let’s talk about Intelligent Verbatim

Like a lot of transcription services, the folks at TypeOlogy use the Intelligent Verbatim method. When you transcribe using Intelligent Verbatim, you do a bit of cleaning up as you go. You skip the ums and ahs and the occasional “y’know” or “I mean”, cutting the words we inevitably repeat while we’re getting our thoughts in order. Then you fix the punctuation, because people don’t actually punctuate their speech. And all of this depends upon interpreting the speech we’re transcribing in a way that’s sensitive and appropriate. Right now, AI just isn’t very good at that. It’s starting to get better at it – for example, you can set up some online services to remove ums and ahs automatically – but it’s still hit and miss, and when people are talking at length, especially when it’s an unscripted conversation, the result is often a bit of a mess.

To demonstrate, below is the raw transcript of the preceding paragraph, read out clearly and at a normal speaking pace, and put through one of the better online AI speech-to-text services (one I do actually use from time to time):

OK, that isn’t terrible, but it is still going to take a bit of cleaning up. Now imagine what that’d look like with the stops, starts, and interjections of unrehearsed, unread speech.

The proof is in the word salad

We’ve noticed an increasing number of clients coming to us with automated transcripts, asking if we’ll edit them to make them fit for purpose. Surely a half-decent transcript is better than no transcript at all? Doesn’t that make things a lot easier?

Well, that depends on who’s talking. Audio from an experienced, trained orator (a barrister or politician, perhaps) will come out better than someone with a regional accent describing personal experiences in an informal conversation, for example. This is another problem with AI transcription: it remains less accessible for people who aren’t provided with education or certain class markers. But even your very best case is probably going to look something like the text that my example generated.

Isn’t that still better than not having it? Crucially, this really depends on your skill set. The fact is, an automated transcription requires a different set of skills to work on.

An experienced transcriber with the right equipment can do a full transcription without really stopping typing, just occasionally taking their foot off the pedal while they catch up with the audio.

But a pre-produced transcription is different. No matter how perfect the transcription is, there isn’t currently an AI that can do Intelligent Verbatim. You’ve got to stop and start the audio while you separate out the bits where the AI got the speakers mixed up. You need to fix the punctuation. You have to remove the “yeahs” and the “OKs” and all the other phatic utterances people unconsciously make while they’re listening. You’ll have to go through and sort out the proper names that the AI just didn’t know, and occasionally streamline some phrasing. And from time to time some background noise, or two people talking at the same time, or just a strong regional accent will generate a nice tasty word salad.

No matter how accurate the AI output, the task of correcting it stops being a transcription job and becomes much more of an editorial and proofing job. And on top of that, it’s one that needs you to be listening to the audio at the same time. As a result, the time a skilled editor winds up spending on it works out roughly the same as a transcriber would take typing it up from scratch – sometimes even longer.

This is why, as members of an ethical co-operative that believes in compensating its workers fairly, we don’t currently offer a discount for editing automated transcripts. As AI transcriptions improve, this might change, but for the moment, the technology still has a way to go.

This doesn’t mean that AI services aren’t a valuable tool. They will definitely change how we work in years to come, but they’re still not at the stage where they make our lives easier, let alone put us out of jobs. They’re just another tool, and they create different challenges.

Simple Tips for Recording Online Interviews

If you’re a qualitative researcher, the chances are you conduct most of your interviews online using Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meets. That’s why we’ve created this follow up to our blog post Simple Tips for How to Record an Audio Interview.

Recording remote interviews comes with different challenges to recording audio interviews in person, but the benefits of high quality recording are the same. By following these few simple steps, you can make sure you’re still producing good quality audio recordings.

1. Record within the online platform

It may seem obvious, but use the recording tool within the online platform you are using. Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet all allow you to record a video meeting and all have support pages explaining now to do it. It may be tempting to just put your dictaphone or phone recorder next to your phone or laptop, but this will result in a poorer quality recording, especially of the participant’s voice. Look at the Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet support pages for how to record within the meeting. If you have problems, contact the customer service team, or check out some YouTube videos. Your audio transcription service will be grateful!

2. Speak into the mic

We’ve all been in online meetings where some of the speakers have been inaudible. When you’re interviewing somebody, you want them to feel at ease. However, if the voice is inaudible on the recording, it’s no use to you.

If your interviewee has a set of headphones with a built-in mic encourage them to use them, as they will then be speaking directly into the microphone. Standard mobile phone headphones work fine. If they don’t have these, encourage them to sit closer to the device microphone until you can hear them clearly.

If the person is inexperienced in video calling, do a tech check the day before to iron out any problems. It’s usually worth doing a short test recording before you start the interview, to make sure everyone can be heard clearly.

3. Reduce background noise

Remember this point from our first blog post? Well, it’s exactly the same with an online interview, except that in this case you have less control over where your interviewee will be located. When you schedule the interview, ask them to find a quiet space if they can where they will be undisturbed. If you have audio email notifications, make sure to turn them off.

As before, think about potential sources of background noise, such as passing traffic or a nearby school. Think about closing any windows. If next door’s kids come home at 3pm and make lots of noise, try to organise the interview for a quieter time of day.

4. Check your Internet connection

Video calls can be disrupted by low bandwidth and unstable Internet. You’ll know this is happening when the line starts to crackle or scramble, or the other person’s video freezes altogether. Sometimes you will get a message saying ‘your Internet connection is unstable’.

If your WiFi connection is weak, conduct your interviews as close to your router as possible, or think about using an ethernet cable. If you have a large house and can’t get closer to the router, you could invest in an extender. However, check out these tips before you spend money, because it may simply be that you need to update your router’s firmware or ensure you are on the 5GHz band.

If you have problems within the interview, turning off your own or the interviewee’s video can help, as it reduces the amount of data the device needs to send.

5. Limit speakers talking over each other

Check out our first post Simple Tips for How to Record an Audio Interview for tips on this. It’s just as important when recording online!

Conclusion

These are simple and easy to implement tips on how to record an online interview which is clear and audible.

This will not only help you get the most from your qualitative research, but can also make life easier for your academic transcription service – saving you both time and money.

Do you have any other tips to improve the quality of online interview recordings? Let us know in the comments.

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TypeOlogy is an academic transcription service based in the UK.

Simple tips for how to record an audio interview

Recording an interview so that the speakers are clearly audible can be trickier than it seems, but by following these few simple steps you can make sure you’re producing good quality audio recordings for your qualitative research right away.

High quality audio has many benefits. Most importantly, you will avoid losing any valuable information from the interviewee. But for purposes of transcription, the quality of the audio is crucial. Interviews with decent audio are cheaper to transcribe and can be completed more quickly, meaning you save valuable money and time for your research project.

This is a handful of simple tips on recording an audio interview that you can use today.

1. Reduce background noise

It may seem obvious, but background noise is the number one cause of poor audio quality. It isn’t always possible to conduct interviews in a quiet place, but taking simple steps to reduce background noise can have a huge impact on the result.

Try to avoid public places such as cafés or parks. If possible, a private space such as the interviewee’s house, a booked meeting space or your office, is ideal.

Think about potential sources of background noise, even if it seems quiet now. There may be no traffic on the road outside right now, but if a truck goes past at the wrong moment you may lose something crucial. So think about closing any windows.

Closely survey your environment, as even seemingly minor background noises can become a problem. The fridge in the next room may be barely audible, but when the compressor kicks in halfway through the interview it may become a big problem. Can you close a door or unplug an appliance to avoid this kind of issue?

Your audio transcription service will be grateful!

2. Limit speakers talking over each other

For some types of interview, the more conversational the tone, the more an interviewee opens up. However, this can lead to the second most common issue for audio quality – speakers talking over one-another. The more casual the tone of the interview, the bigger an issue this is likely to be.

Each research project is different, so it is up to the researcher to decide how best to strike the balance here. However, there are some simple things you can do to reduce this problem. It can be helpful to explain this to interviewees at the start, and remind them if it becomes overly chatty.

You may choose to employ non-verbal language, such as nods and gestures. In certain situations, it can even be useful to employ a rule, such as only the person holding a certain object can speak.

You will never eliminate people speaking over each other, but taking simple steps to limit this issue can have a huge impact on the quality of your interview recording.

3. Placement of recording device

Whatever device you’re recording on, placement is key. Make sure you put the recorder in a place where it can pick up clearly both the interviewer and any interviewees. It’s usually worth doing a short test recording before you start the interview, to make sure everyone can be heard clearly.

Again, be mindful of potential noises when placing the Dictaphone. A glass desk may seem sensible, but if a nearby phone vibrates or an interviewee taps the desktop, that small sounds can be like an earthquake on your audio recording.

4. Upgrade your equipment

This is at the end of the list because, quite simply, there’s no point splashing out on expensive kit if you haven’t first tried the above tips. It may be that, when you take steps to limit interference, your iPhone or tablet produces decent enough audio for your purposes. Great!

If not, only then do you want to invest in better equipment. We are currently writing a guide for buying a digital audio recorder, but the simplest advice is to ask yourself: what will I use it for? There is no point spending extra on a Dictaphone with long battery life if you are just conducting short interviews in your office.

Conclusion

These are simple and easy to implement tips on how to record an audio interview which is clear and audible.

This will not only help you get the most from your qualitative research, but can also make life easier for your academic transcription service – saving you both time and money.

Do you have any other tips to improve the quality of interview recordings? Let us know in the comments.

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TypeOlogy is an academic transcription service based in the UK.

Why you should create a transcript for your podcast

Millions of people worldwide are tuning into podcasts for learning, entertainment, and news. And if you are spending the time to create good quality content, you want to make sure that content is as accessible and discoverable as possible.

What’s a transcript?

A transcript is a word-for-word account of your podcast. It is made by listening to your podcast and writing down what has been said so it can be read.

There are loads of different reasons why you should provide transcripts alongside your podcasts:

Accessibility

Providing a written transcript can be useful in removing barriers to enjoyment of your podcast. 11 million people in the UK are deaf or hard of hearing. Some people with difficulty with sensory processing might also prefer to read than to listen. Listeners whose first language is not English may find having a written transcript useful so they can look up words that they have missed. Providing a transcript of your podcast can help expand your audience and can help give you a good reputation for being inclusive.

Better Search Engine Optimisation

Providing transcripts on your website gives a massive amount of searchable content on your webpage, increasing the amount of traffic to your website, meaning you reach more potential listeners. Many content creators will only link to podcast content that has a transcript, as it provides something for their readers and listeners to explore without listening to a whole episode. The increase in backlinks to your website will also increase your search engine optimisation, meaning you have more ways for your potential listeners to find out about your podcast.

Increase your social media engagement

Having an accessible and searchable transcript allows your listeners to more easily share quotes and highlights from your podcast on their social media – meaning you increase your reach and engagement.

Using transcripts for new content

Transcripts are a valuable source of written copy that can be easily repurposed into blogs, infographics, and social media posts.

Creating a transcript is easier than you think!

Having a transcript made is easier and cheaper than you might think. While you could use an automatic transcription service, the technology isn’t fully there and so it often doesn’t provide a reliable transcript. There is no accurate substitute for a human being.

At TypeOlogy, we aim to offer a fairly-priced service. Our base rate is £1.20 per minute of audio. However, we may make additional charges depending on the quality of audio, number of speakers, etc. If you email us at typeology.coop@gmail.com with a sample of your audio we can give you an accurate quote. We may be able to offer discounted rates for students and for community projects whose aims we support. Please contact us for details.