Transcription software assists in the conversion of human speech into a text transcript. Audio or video files can be transcribed manually or automatically. Transcriptionists can replay a recording several times in a transcription editor and type what they hear. By using transcription hot keys, the manual transcription can be accelerated, the sound filtered, equalized or have the tempo adjusted when the clarity is not great. With

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the m ...

technology, transcriptionists can automatically convert recordings to text transcripts by opening recordings in a PC and uploading them to a cloud for automatic transcription, or transcribe recordings in real-time by using

digital dictation A dictation machine is a sound recording device most commonly used to record speech for playback or to be typed into print. It includes digital voice recorders and tape recorder. The name "Dictaphone" is a trademark of the company of the same n ...

. Depending on quality of recordings, machine generated transcripts may still need to be manually verified. The accuracy rate of the automatic transcription depends on several factors such as background noises, speakers' distance to the microphone, and accents. Transcription software, as with

transcription services Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including: Genetics * Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...

, is often provided for business, legal, or medical purposes. Compared with audio content, a text transcript is searchable, takes up less computer memory, and can be used as an alternate method of communication, such as for

closed captions Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information. Both are typically used as a transcription of the audio por ...

. The definition of transcription "software", as compared with transcription "service", is that the former is sufficiently automated that a user can run the entire system without engaging outside personnel. However, the advent of

software-as-a-service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is cons ...

and

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

models blur this distinction. It uses

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

and

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to pro ...

to convert speech to text and continuously learn new phrases and accents.

Development

Research at Google released a free android app

Google Live Transcribe Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. I ...

, it runs on

Google Cloud Google Cloud Platform offers numerous integrated cloud-computing services, including compute, network, and storage. Products Past and present products under the Google Cloud platform include: Current * Google Cloud Datastore, a NoSQL databa ...

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...

developed and has a available built in English Live Caption.

Google Docs Google Docs is an online word processor included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google, which also includes: Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites and Google Keep. Google Do ...

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an API t ...

Google Assistant Google Assistant is a virtual assistant software application developed by Google that is primarily available on mobile and home automation devices. Based on artificial intelligence, Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations, unlike t ...

GBoard Gboard is a virtual keyboard app developed by Google for Android and iOS devices. It was first released on iOS in May 2016, followed by a release on Android in December 2016, debuting as a major update to the already-established Google Keyboard ...

Google Text to Speech engine support transcription tool too.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Transcription Speech recognition

Development

See also

References