Transcription Basic Transcription 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which audio issue most commonly causes transcription errors and requires re-listening?
- High-quality studio recording
- Heavy background noise masking speech (Correct answer)
- A single speaker with a clear microphone
- Slow speaking pace
Correct answer: Heavy background noise masking speech
Background noise—traffic, HVAC, music—overlaps with speech frequencies and forces multiple re-listens, increasing error risk.
Question 2: How should a transcriptionist handle a speaker's long, run-on sentence with no natural pauses?
- Break it into multiple sentences using standard punctuation rules (Correct answer)
- Transcribe it as one continuous line with no punctuation
- Summarize it in shorter form
- Flag it as [inaudible] due to complexity
Correct answer: Break it into multiple sentences using standard punctuation rules
Clean and intelligent verbatim transcription applies standard grammar punctuation to improve readability without changing meaning.
Question 3: What is a 'verbatim note' or 'transcriptionist note' and when is it used?
- A correction the client inserts after delivery
- A bracketed comment explaining an unclear or unusual element to the client (Correct answer)
- A summary appended at the end of the document
- A time-coded index of all speaker changes
Correct answer: A bracketed comment explaining an unclear or unusual element to the client
Transcriptionist notes, written in brackets (e.g., [TN: spelling uncertain]), flag issues that require client review or clarification.
Question 4: When transcribing a phone interview with noticeable audio compression artifacts, what should you do when a word is genuinely unintelligible?
- Write the closest word you can think of without flagging it
- Insert [inaudible] at that point (Correct answer)
- Delete the entire sentence
- Replace it with a synonym that fits the context
Correct answer: Insert [inaudible] at that point
[Inaudible] honestly marks audio that cannot be reliably transcribed, preserving the transcript's integrity rather than guessing.
Question 5: A client's style guide says to use 'Oxford comma' style. Which sentence is correctly punctuated?
- She bought apples, oranges and bananas.
- She bought apples, oranges, and bananas. (Correct answer)
- She bought apples oranges, and bananas.
- She bought apples, oranges, and, bananas.
Correct answer: She bought apples, oranges, and bananas.
The Oxford (serial) comma is placed before the final 'and' in a list of three or more items.
Question 6: What does 'audio scrubbing' mean in transcription?
- Cleaning static from an audio file before transcribing
- Slowly moving through audio to catch missed words or verify accuracy (Correct answer)
- Deleting unwanted segments of audio
- Converting audio from stereo to mono
Correct answer: Slowly moving through audio to catch missed words or verify accuracy
Audio scrubbing refers to manually dragging through audio at variable speed to review and catch errors during proofreading.
Question 7: Which of the following best describes a 'two-pass' transcription workflow?
- Transcribing the file twice using two different software tools
- First drafting the transcript, then reviewing it against the audio a second time (Correct answer)
- Having two different people transcribe the same file independently
- Splitting the audio into two halves for faster processing
Correct answer: First drafting the transcript, then reviewing it against the audio a second time
A two-pass workflow separates drafting from quality review, catching errors that are easy to miss when transcribing and reading simultaneously.
Transcription Basic Transcription 4
Which audio issue most commonly causes transcription errors and requires re-listening?