Transcription
Transcription is the process of converting spoken audio into written text, either by a human typist or by automatic speech recognition software.
Modern transcription is dominated by neural speech-recognition models that convert hours of audio in minutes, with human review reserved for the highest-stakes contexts like certified legal transcripts.
The practical quality bar is whether the text is accurate enough for its purpose: searchable notes tolerate small errors, published quotes and captions do not — which is why word error rate and a quick review pass both matter.
Related terms
Frequently asked
What is Transcription?
Transcription is the process of converting spoken audio into written text, either by a human typist or by automatic speech recognition software.
Why does Transcription matter?
Modern transcription is dominated by neural speech-recognition models that convert hours of audio in minutes, with human review reserved for the highest-stakes contexts like certified legal transcripts.
What terms are related to Transcription?
Closely related concepts: Automatic speech recognition (ASR), Word error rate (WER), Verbatim transcription, Speaker diarization — each has its own entry in this glossary.
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