How to Transcribe a Tape
Learning to transcribe a tape into text can be a valuable skill to have. Businesses and professions such as lawyers, banks and homeowner's associations need people to transcribe events or meetings that have been recorded into written form. In addition, a speedy transcriptionist can make a good living as a self-employed legal or medical transcriber. Transcribing a tape into text is usually not hard to learn for most typists, but it will take time and practice before it can be done quickly and accurately.
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Instructions
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Insert the audio tape that needs to be transcribed into a transcribing machine and rewind the tape, if necessary. Reset the tape counter to zero.
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Put your headphones on and play the tape to listen to its quality and to make adjustments to the tone and volume. Also, every tape has its idiosyncrasies. Some will rewind more or less than others when cued by the foot pedal, so you should adjust the back space option so that it is set for the specific tape you are transcribing. Also listen carefully to the speaker. Sometimes a tape will play slower or faster than others and distort the speaker's voice. Adjust the speed controls accordingly.
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Locate what channel each speaker is on. If there are multiple people speaking on the tape and you have multiple channels on your machine, play the tape and listen to each channel separately to see if you can hear certain speakers better on one channel or another. This will come in handy later if speakers start talking over one another and you need to try to hear them separately.
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Open a new document in a word processing program.
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Rewind to the start of the tape and then begin transcribing by pressing on the foot pedal, which will start the tape playing. Listen carefully to the speaker or speakers and type the audio word for word onto your word processing program. To stop the tape, release the foot pedal, and the tape will stop and reverse a bit backwards so that you can hear the last few words you have typed and so that you can catch your typing up with the audio.
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Note the number on the tape counter on your transcript if you cannot hear or understand a portion of your tape and if someone else will be proofreading your transcript later. If you are working for a court reporting or medical transcribing company, many employ proofreaders so that a second set of eyes can read over the transcript. It is important for them to be able to find an area you had trouble with on the tape. They can do this if you give them a counter number to work with.
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Proofread and spell check your final transcript for errors. Even if your work will be proofread later, a transcriber should always look over their work themselves.
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Verify any areas of your transcript that don't sound right with the tape. If something doesn't sound right, replay the portion of the tape to make sure you heard it correctly.
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