Transcription Guidelines

Do you want to have an audio file manually transcribed? You will be offered a choice between full verbatim or clean read transcription. What results can you expect per transcription type? And what guidelines do Amberscript’s transcribers follow?

This guide will also assist you in deciding which form of transcription best suits your needs and will shed some light on the transcription guidelines followed by the transcribers.

Clean read and full verbatim: Distinctions

Clean read (default): Goal – capture what has been said. End result: Grammatically correct transcript, with the good reading flow.

Examples: Organization/company meetings, municipality meetings, presentations, etc.

Full verbatim: Goal – capture how something has been said. End result: Precise transcript, as close to audio as possible.

Examples: Research interviews like patient-doctor conversations, speech analysis, legal documents like court hearings, focus group interviews where the emotions of the interviewee play an important role, etc.

English transcription guidelines in a nutshell:

• Clean read transcriptions do not include: Speech errors, false starts, repetitions, slang words, stutters, filler words, etc.
• In full verbatim transcriptions, the text is transcribed exactly as it sounds including speech errors, false starts, filler words, slang words, repetitions, and stutters.
• The numbers zero up to and including nine are written out (i.e. one, three, nine)
• The number 10 and above are written in digits (10, 11, etc.)
• If a number is at the start of a new sentence, it is written out fully.
• Times and dates are written as digits.

Punctuation guidelines to be followed:

Transcription tags used:

The following tags are included in a transcription when they are relevant for the transcription or context.