Dictaphone - Transcription - Typing

Dictaphone - Transcription - Typing 'the difference'!

There is a difference between Dictaphone, Transcription, and Typing.
Dictaphone and Transcription are similar so we charge at an audio hourly rate or hourly rate and these are not referred to as typing in any way, they are both a skill in themselves and not everyone can do them. With both you listen then type up what you hear (Transcribe). This involves excellent listening skills, good grammar, english knowledge, knowledge of punctuation, and concentration etc.
Dictaphone is normally one person, could be a doctor or an attorney recording into a digital machine, recording device and then you as a Transcriptionist listen to that tape and transcribe it. This is normally quicker to do than doing a transcription of many people involved.
Transcription can be more involved, it can be a recording of a meeting with a few people present, a conference session, court hearings etc. It is usually when more than one person is speaking and the event is being recorded. Court recording are difficult to do as they can involve a lot of speakers and different language challenges and maybe a translator being involved. A focus group is difficult to transcribe as often there is a lot of people involved and cross talking all at once.
These two skills are not the same as copy typing, they are more involved and can take many hours to transcribe into a document therefore there is normally an hourly or audio hourly rate involved not a per page rate. It will normally take between 4 to 6 hours to transcribe a one hour file. Transcription of a Focus Group meeting can take a lot longer.
A lot of people have no idea that transcription and typing are not the same thing, a client can ring you and ask you to do typing and its not really typing it is transcription, make sure you verify this before quoting on the work, ask the client for an example, they can send you an example of a transcription sound file or a page taken from what they require copy typing. Ask for details/information on these tasks before quoting, the more detail you have the easier it is to quote. Do not quote blindly.
With transcription you need to listen to the file before quoting. There could be multiple speakers, cross talking, background noise, dual languages, if you listen first it can give you a good idea of how long you think you will take doing the transcript.
Typing is what it is and is not either of the above and it’s charged at a per page rate or a per word rate (sometimes students like it per word, but not often). Typing is normally when you type from written notes, PDF documents, author's books, reports, tenders, copy typing, company correspondence etc.
With typing you need to ask the client for an example, a client can say well its just copy typing, that maybe but copy typing can include graphs, flow diagrams, graphics, scanning of graphics, all these take more time to create and this must be taken into consideration when there is deadlines and you need to meet that deadline. If you scan that is time taking, if you need to do a graph or flow diagram they need to be created from scratch which is also time taking, this is not simple copy typing. A graphic can be scanned or involve being retreaved from the internet therefore you may have to find it, which can involve internet research, this time has to be featured in as part of your quote. To do a flow diagram it can take quite a few hours, remember this if you charge on a per page rate. Flow diagrams are not quick and easy, you have to build it from scratch, the layout has to be right, they can be very involved. Graphs and charts can mean that they need to be done in Excel then copied across to word into your document, this is also a process of creating and copying, time taking.
So you see copy typing is often not just copy typing.
These are just points to remember if you get asked to quote on Dictatation, Trancription and Typing.