Audio files can only get you so far. For educators trying to make lessons more engaging and accessible to marketers expanding their reach, creating multiple access points to a message can make or break a message. For audio creators of any kind, one simple and impactful step to getting a message out there is to transcribe audio files to text. In this article, we’ll help you get started. Whether you want to check out the latest AI-powered options or roll up your sleeves and start typing, get ready to learn how to transcribe audio to text with confidence.

Automatic Transcription

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) tools are getting more and more accurate with the power of AI technology. We want to help you be prepared for success in using ASR tools to transcribe audio files. And there are a few tried-and-true tips for getting started with automatic transcription. 

Audio Quality Matters

Our first tip is to be mindful of the quality of your audio when choosing which files to submit for automatic transcription. It’s best to only use clear, high quality audio with ASR technology because difficult or low quality audio can create worse output. Automated steps are supposed to make your workflow easier and more manageable. But inaccurate output from difficult audio adds more steps for post-editing and even re-transcription in the worst cases. So check your audio quality before you settle in to have an AI-powered speech recognition tool transcribe recordings for you.

Transcribe from Audio File with the Right Tool

If you are ready to transcribe an audio file fast with no cost, we curated a list of free captioning tools, many of which work for both video and audio. There are also many in-browser options that will transcribe from an audio file automatically. Speechnotes.co, for example, is a site that transcribes pre recorded audio files as well as live transcription.

Live Transcription

Google Docs offers voice typing available on Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge browsers. It’s pretty simple to use, with a few voice commands you can transcribe yourself live. Google also offers browser plugins like Transkriptor for live transcriptions. For another option, Amazon Transcribe has both free and paid tiers based on the hours of audio content that need to be converted to text. 

Post-editing Your Automatic Transcript

Now that you have a few new items in your transcription toolbelt, we have one final note on using ASR tools. While the benefits of creating transcription are apparent to anyone in the content creation game, the most important impact can sometimes be lost if we’re not careful. And that is the enjoyment and access of the audience. To ensure the impact of your work, always remember to review transcription before it reaches the final audience. While ASR tools are more accurate than ever, they are not perfect. 

Decide on the quality of the transcript that you want as your final product. A good transcript captures the speech in an audio file, but in some cases more is involved. Imagine an old-fashioned radio play where only the dialogue is captured and none of the sound. The audio could have many plot-relevant sounds that are not speech: a car backfiring, a door opening, or other indicators of action could be lost to the audience if they are not included in the transcript. Designate a reviewer (or, better yet, two) who is familiar enough with your transcript standards to correct errors with confidence. This is especially important for audio that shares information that is especially technical or complicated. Just as a teacher wouldn’t want the wrong word to be defined, a marketer might catch a misspelled brand name!

Transcribe Audio Yourself

Maybe you want to learn how to transcribe audio manually. Transcribing audio files yourself can help you side-step the errors that some ASR tools make. If your audio files are lower quality or have a lot of niche technical terms, it might be less stressful to transcribe them yourself. After all, typing what you hear can be easier than post editing the same mistaken term over and over again. We’ll give you some tips on how to transcribe audio files without the use of automatic tools.

Separate Speakers with Line Breaks

The most basic version of a transcript is one big block of text that captures all of the speech in an audio file. But that can be hard for audiences to parse. One quick way to help your audience reach comprehension of your content is to put in line breaks. This can be helpful to differentiate speakers or to show where there is a scene change or subject change. We’ll give more tips for creating a stellar final cut for your transcript, but if you only use one this would be a good choice. For people trying to visually scan your transcript, line breaks are a great help.

Capturing Non-Speech Sounds

Transcribing audio seems simple enough. You might even have a script that the audio came from. But transcribing your recording involves more than just reformatting the initial script. As we mentioned in a previous section, quality transcription sometimes needs to include more than just speech. Important sounds should be transcribed so that the content you create is accessible for deaf and hard of hearing people. The transcription you create should stand on its own as a representation of your message. If non-speech sounds are integral to that message, it’s important to include them.

Verbatim vs. Non-Verbatim

Learning how to transcribe an audio file with relevant sounds means deciding which sounds are relevant enough to include and which ones are not. But what is a relevant sound, anyway? Let’s talk about verbatim transcripts. They are used in official court proceedings and other instances where capturing all of the sounds is the standard. This means including speakers’ disfluencies like stuttering, filler words, and other verbal information.

Most transcripts for content creators are non-verbatim. This means that speech and other important sounds are included. So if someone’s stuttering is brought up by someone else or is important to the larger conversation, then it should be included. But most speech has some disfluency in it that isn’t relevant to the overall audio. So it’s a judgment call, but it’s a call that is much easier if you make a clear choice from the start between creating a verbatim transcript or a non-verbatim one.

Speaker tags and Other Information

When you go to transcribe audio to text, it might be useful to add other information into the final version. For example, if you are transcribing a podcast episode where you have more than one host, then speaker tags might be essential. When listening to a podcast, a hearing audience member might be able to parse out who said what if the voices are familiar. But even the most avid fan might have trouble with guest hosts or or even multiple guests in one conversation. Speaker tags can really clear things up! To include speaker tags, insert their name within brackets or parentheses at the beginning of their first line. Then insert speaker tags throughout the transcript any time the speaker switches. Be consistent and this can be a great tool for audiences using your transcript.

If the speakers in your audio have put on affectations, accents, or used specific emphasis it might be worth including that information. This is about capturing the tone of your content but also preserving the work put into it. If your audio file is the result of a team effort, make sure you value that effort by including your team’s creative decisions in the final cut.

Benefits of audio transcription

We’re obviously big fans of creating text versions of spoken content. But that’s because there are so many benefits to transcription. First, it makes audio easier to search within. That goes for both people and search engines. Imagine a student attempting to search through a lecture recording for a specific term. By choosing to transcribe a recording to text, it’s as simple as using the find function and typing in the term. That’s much easier than listening to the audio file at 2x speed hoping to hear something!

If you choose to transcribe audio files to text, search engines will be able to find and index your content much more easily. We’re not at the place yet where search engines can process audio as well as they can process text. So by choosing transcription, you are giving your SEO a huge boost which can help the right people find your content more easily.

Creating a transcript makes audio more accessible. Not only does this make an inclusive statement for your brand or product, it also broadens your audience by a wide margin. Many people are deaf or hard of hearing, and by making a text version of your audio files you are opening the door to new audiences that couldn’t access your stuff before.

Creating a transcript also puts you on the path for multimodal content creation. Transcripts make it easy to repurpose your content to social media, blog posts, and more. You can take the transcript from one audio file and convert it easily into a blog post or piece it out into an entire social media series without having to redo the same work! You could even go a step further and make your transcript interactive. Interactive transcripts can make audio more accessible, for multimodal learning in educational programs.

Amara is here to help!

If you want professional transcription, you can always buy them from our team of language experts. Check out that link to see all that Amara On Demand has to offer in 50+ available languages.

If you need some a workspace for a team of transcriptionists, Amara has got you covered. An Amara Team offers a private and secure workspace, flexible workflows, and a powerful API that seamlessly connects to your own platform. Sign up to start your project or order AI-powered automatic captions.

Thank you for being a part of Amara’s mission to create a more inclusive, accessible media ecosystem. Happy subtitling!