A Transcriber’s Life

My Life as a Professional Transcriber: Pt 1

When I started transcribing, way back in the early 1990’s, I never guessed it would become a full-time occupation, or the basis for my own business. Back then I could be best described as a professional temp, one of those office all-rounders called in at a moments notice to fill in for another employee taken ill, on leave, or just to help out with work overload.

It was in between assignments; a friend, a journalist writing for a weekly business news magazine, asked me to transcribe several interviews. The interviews came to me on, you guessed it, tape cassettes. I had to transcribe these interviews ‘verbatim’, in other words exactly as spoken. Fortunately for me, my friend the journalist knew how to record interviews, so although the audio quality was far from perfect, mostly the task was easy.

Now I am a Sound Engineer Too!

These days of course, all the audio recording come to me in digital format – I don’t even have a cassette player anymore – are those things still sold anywhere? I think not.