What is Transcription?
Writing down what is said in a recording. It is the core annotation task in any speech dataset.
Transcription looks simple and is in practice where speech data projects go wrong most often. The same recording transcribed by pronunciation and by standard spelling produces two entirely different texts.
That is why any serious project writes a transcription guideline first, fixing how punctuation, particles, loanwords and spoken numbers are handled.
Related terms
-
ASR
Automatic Speech Recognition — the task of turning recorded speech into text.
-
WER
Word Error Rate — the standard accuracy metric for speech recognition. Lower is better.
-
Annotation
Attaching machine-readable labels to raw data — a transcript, an intent, a speaker identity.
Keep reading
-
Full glossary
Every term we explain, in one list.
-
How to buy training data
Where these terms actually show up, and which ones change a quote.
-
Help center
How a project runs, from specification to delivery.
Submit a sourcing request
Tell us the language, the hours, and what the data needs to look like. You will get a real number and a real timeline — not a range. If we cannot source it well, we will tell you that instead.
- Pilot batch before the full run, so problems surface early.
- Consent documentation delivered with the data.
- No medical or clinical data. No recorded telephone calls.