Transcribing an interview requires patience, listening skills, and editing. But a good transcription gives you quick reference points when making important decisions and provides a written document that is easier to work with, analyze, and share with others.

There are three different approaches to how you transcribe an interview:

• Use an automatic transcription tool
• Manual transcription
• Hire a transcription company

A good transcription can also make all the difference in your recruitment process, your research, your legal cases, or other areas you work in.

How do I automatically transcribe an audio or video interview?

Automatic transcription is undoubtedly the fastest, cheapest, and easiest way to convert an interview to text.

Step 1. Get a transcription directly with Klang.ai

Go to Klang.ai and create an account. You will then be redirected to your workspace where you can choose how you want to get your interview transcribed by clicking "New transcription". Choose one of your recorded interviews (Read our guide on how to record) or connect it to your video or phone interviews.

Then Klang.ai analyzes and transcribes your file into an editable transcription with summary and compiles questions and answers.

Klang.ai can also be included already in the interview stage and transcribe directly after the meeting if you, for example, have the automatic AI secretary with you. Invite the secretary or schedule it with a free meeting booking.

Step 2. Edit and complete

Klang.ai transcribes with Sweden's best and highest quality AI transcription and identifies speakers from the meeting. However, it can still be a good idea to read through the transcription before sharing it with your colleagues or others to ensure it is as accurate as possible.

Klang.ai detects recommended changes and guides you through the transcription so you have the most user-friendly process possible. You can also listen through the entire interview with a visual marker so you never lose your way.

Step 3. Export and share your transcription

After you have completed your transcription, you can easily share it with your colleagues or others by clicking "Share" in the toolbar. Share the file transcription within your project on Klang.ai or send the link to an outsider.

Klang.ai also supports downloading the file by clicking "Download" in the toolbar. There you can specify multiple formatting rules and export your file as "*.docx-, *.xlsx-, *.srt-, *.vtt-, *.txt- or *.csv-format".

You can, for example, choose between showing speakers, timestamps, merging segments, choosing time format, and number of blank lines between text.

How do I transcribe an interview manually?

Manually transcribing an interview means you sit and listen through the entire interview and verbatim write down what is said. This is to get as accurate a representation as possible of what was said during the interview.

To facilitate the process of manually transcribing an interview, we have here summarized some steps you can follow:

Set aside time

Manual transcription is very time-consuming, it's usually said that it takes about one hour per 15 minutes. I.e., if you have an hour-long interview, it's about four hours for one hour. So if you're thinking of transcribing your interviews yourself, make sure to set aside a large part of your schedule. It's rarely enough with just one listen-through of an interview. It can also be good to think about that if it involves technical language, dialect, or unfamiliar jargon and slang, it can also take longer as you also need to look up/find out their meaning.

Listen through the entire interview

Listen through the entire interview before you start transcribing to make a plan about how you want to structure it. If you're doing a qualitative interview, for example, you might want to make a structure for different sections and keep it consistent across all your interviews. Some transcriptions can be very extensive and complex depending on the number of speakers, interview length, technical terminology, or the scope of what should be transcribed (is it just a part or the entire interview?).

Transcribe a draft

After you've listened through the interview once, you can start your draft. Make sure you've chosen whether to write a verbatim transcription, intelligent verbatim transcription, edited transcription, or a phonetic transcription. This way you can stay consistent when handling filler words and handling long pauses, etc.

It can be good to make the draft of the transcription as soon as possible after the interview took place. Because it can happen that the person spoke a bit too quietly, quickly, or slurred. But if it was recently the interview happened, you might be able to quickly fill in the gap.

Add timestamps to avoid having to work through the entire interview to quickly jump to a specific point in the interview. If there are words you can't decipher (even after several rewinds), add your best guess within square brackets so the reader knows it was a word that was hard to hear.

Mark the speakers with their names, initials, or T1, T2... It can be a good idea to also use color coding to indicate speakers, especially if the interview contains many speakers.

Proofread and edit your draft

Listen through the interview one more time and proofread your draft. Edit potential mistakes if you encounter any. Also think about following the formatting you chose for your transcription and the area you work in. It should be easy for others to understand what you've written, and you'll probably also need to format the typography, divide into paragraphs, add headings and page numbering.

Hiring a transcription company

When you choose to hire a transcription company, you pay for the human factor, experience, and time.

By sending your audio or video files to a company that houses skilled transcribers, you won't need to spend time on editing. This is because the professional transcribers have experience with the work and do careful work. It's also this careful work that both makes it take longer and cost more.

Here is a selection of transcription companies:

• Semantix - https://www.semantix.com/se/
• Spoken - https://www.spokencompany.se/
• Transkribering.nu - https://transkribering.nu/

Conclusion

Transcribing can have a big impact on your work. Whether you're a lawyer, researcher, recruiter, work in media, or are a student, the quality of transcription affects your end result. From quick reference points, selected quotes, analysis points, an efficient way to compile reports or research results; good transcriptions benefit most people. You never know when you need to refer or go back to an old interview.

I hope these tips and information can help you on your way as you now move forward with transcribing your interviews. Klang.ai can save you several hours that you can instead spend on editing your transcriptions and on other parts of your projects.