Remember the days when the college lecturer rambled on with literary quotations and when there would be a mad scramble for notes, but not any more. These days there are companies that specialize in making a student's life easier. Transcription means converting the spoken data into written text that serves as a handy reference; teachers, lecturers, researchers, students and the writing community benefit from this service. Someone who is keen on getting into this profession needs to have a sharp ear for phonetics, adequate subject knowledge and good command over the language.

For instance sermon transcription involves understanding of the scriptures and contextual reference. While business transcription needs a sound knowledge or at least fundamental understanding of financial terms and jargon that analysts and financial investors often use. Technology has made it simpler for anyone wanting to get into speech transcription. These days there are plenty of free software available online that allow start ups wanting to try out transcription services as a business venture. This could entail conversion of audio material recorded on tapes into text form where the transcriber painstakingly listens to what has been said on the tape and transcribes it in written format as specified by the client.

Lectures or speeches are more often than not a monologue where there is just one person speaking and transcribing such recordings is much easier than the ones where there are multiple speakers. At times, this format could change and the recorded audio may be a question and answer session, where it calls for a bit more attention while transcribing the same. Audio files used for transcription services could be in WAV or MP3 format. While a WAV file is a type of audio file albeit larger in size that can contain either music or voice-only audio, MP3 is more convenient and handy to work with, for the transcribers. An MP3 format allows compression of sound data without compromising on the quality of sound making it easy to exchange files online or via email.

Speech transcription firms use technology to convert audio files into word format. The software automatically converts the MP3 or WAV file into text and the converted file opens in a text editing form. The transcriber then listens to the audio and edits the auto-converted word file for discrepancies. Often times foreign dialect, back ground noise and poor audio quality makes for poor auto-transcription making human intervention a necessity more than a requirement.