Transcription: Quality Control Standards

The Quality Control team uses the following premises to review any deliverable submitted to the system:

Technical Requirements:

• Font formatting is correct: Times New Roman or Arial, 12pt, 1.5 lines
• Timestamps should include the starting and ending points of each paragraph.
• Sound effects included: laughter, clapping, overlapping conversation, explosions, etc. For example: [onomatopeia]
• Speaker name or identification is included
• Numbers are spelled correctly.

Project Requirements:

Formatting

We ask our transcribers to use the template we've created for transcription projects. You should have access to it and be able to make a copy. The format is built as follows:

Font: Times New Roman 12pt or Arial 12pt.

Spacing: 1.5 lines

Time formatting: [00:00:00]

• Timestamps should include the starting and ending points of each paragraph. These should be included in the format, inside their respective column. 

Sound effects: [onomatopeia]

• Sound effects include but are not limited to laughter, clapping, overlapping conversation, explosions, etc.

Speakers: Speaker:

• If the speaker includes narrators and characters, each character should be named where possible (e.g., Angela). If the character doesn’t have a name, each character should be clearly differentiated (e.g., Kid 1, Mom 2), and naming should be consistent throughout the transcription.

• Color coding is permitted to avoid confusion if too many characters are included. Be mindful of the colors used as they should be readable.

Numbers:

• 0 - 10 is spelled out (one, two, three, four, five, etc.)

• Any number series should not be spelled out. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

• Detailed thousands and millions should be in numbers with appropriate ‘,', ‘'', and '.’ when necessary. (i.e. 5’1,200.5).

• Rounded numbers should be written with a combination of words and numbers. (e.g., 45 million, 12.5 billion, 14 hundred).

• Fractions should be spelled out (one-half, two-fifths) unless it is greater than one (e.g. 4 1/3, 5 8/9).

Omitting a part of the source file is allowed to divide a section into different characters and/or timestamps. However, not a single second should be missed.

• Is the entire file transcribed?

• Is the transcription easy to follow as per the source file?

All words should be transcribed exactly as they are and spelled correctly. If there are words that are unique to the file, of which the client did not provide spelling, the transcriptor should state which those words are. If possible, the transcriptor should spell the word as best as they can and provide a phonetic transcription.

• Is the transcription accurate to the source file?

• Are there any spelling mistakes?

• Are uncommon words clearly marked?

Review table