Transcribing Examples: Different Types of Transcription Explained

The way people create and consume content has changed dramatically. Podcasts, webinars, video files, and social media clips dominate communication today, while industries like health care, law, and research still rely heavily on accurate transcripts of audio recordings. This shift has made transcription more important than ever; not just for accessibility, but also for readability, searchability, and repurposing content.

Choosing the right kind of transcription depends on your goals, whether you need a verbatim transcription that captures every utterance or an edited transcript optimized for clarity. In this guide, we'll walk through examples of transcribing across industries, explore the different types of transcription, and show how modern workflows combine transcription software with skilled professionals to deliver accurate transcripts.

Why transcription matters today

Advancements in AI transcription software have lowered barriers for beginners and made it faster to transcribe audio at scale. Still, human transcriptionists and freelancers remain essential for industries where accuracy, punctuation, and context matter, such as depositions, dictation, and medical records. In fact, the business transcription market is forecasted to reach over $9.5 billion by 2034, growing at a 12.2% compound annual growth rate.

Transcription has become increasingly important in our media-rich, digital world. From accessibility to content strategy, its value spans multiple industries and audiences. The primary reasons why transcription matters today are that it:

• Supports content repurposing. Podcasts, webinars, TikToks, and YouTube videos can be transcribed into text, making it easier to convert spoken content into blog posts, eBooks, or social media updates.
• Enhances accessibility. Subtitles and closed captions allow people who are deaf or hard of hearing to fully engage with video content. In schools and workplaces, transcripts provide inclusive access to information for learners and team members.
• Improves search engine optimization (SEO) performance. Transcribed content adds indexable text that boosts search engine visibility, helping businesses increase reach and attract more organic traffic.
• Serves vital industry needs. Transcription is important in health care, law, academia, and entertainment. It's used to document patient records, capture court proceedings, analyze research interviews, and support subtitles or dubbing in media.

Examples of when you would need transcription

Practically any kind of information created in almost every medium may need transcription, including audio files, videos, and written materials.

Audio transcription

Audio transcription serves a variety of purposes across different industries. Some common applications of audio transcription include:

• Legal depositions are transcribed for easy access by lawyers, juries, and judges
• Health care professionals transcribe recorded notes for medical records
• Academic researchers convert interviews and focus group discussions to text for analysis
• Businesses transcribe conference calls and meetings for decision-making and accountability
• The entertainment industry uses transcription for subtitles and closed captions, improving accessibility
• Formal publications like academic journals and corporate reports use edited transcription for enhanced readability and professionalism

Video transcription

Video transcription is the process of converting a video or film audio track into text, which serves multiple purposes across various fields. Examples of key applications include:

• Video interviews are transcribed for blogs and news articles
• Documentary films are often converted into eBooks through transcription
• Educational lectures and instructional videos are transcribed to improve learning experiences for students with diverse needs
• SEO for online content can be improved by transcribing video content to text
• Digital marketing often involves transcribing video content so it can be repurposed into various text-based formats

These are just a few of the endless ways transcription can expand reach and engagement across multiple platforms in the digital space.

Writing transcription

Written PDFs and handwritten materials such as notes, letters, and manuscripts are routinely transcribed. Transcribing written materials may include converting multiple notes into a single, readable text document or extracting copy from brochures and similar materials to create a text-only layout.

This process is an important part of digitizing archival documents and preserving historical records. By transcribing written materials, organizations can make vast collections of information more accessible and searchable. This enables researchers and the public to explore and analyze important historical and cultural resources easily.

Four common types of transcription

Now that we've covered the kinds of materials transcription applies to, let's look at the transcription types: edited, verbatim, intelligent, and phonetic.

Each has advantages and disadvantages. The type of transcription you choose depends mostly on the purpose you have for the transcribed content.

Also, keep in mind that transcription to written text offers improved access to materials for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. This accessibility enables more equitable participation in educational settings, professional environments, public discourse, and many other fields.

Here's a table that organizes and compares the four common types of transcription, their characteristics, applications, and when each is most appropriate:

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1. Edited transcription

An edited transcription creates a complete, accurate script that is formalized and edited for readability, conciseness, and clarity. Edited transcription addresses issues like grammatical mistakes, slang, and incomplete sentences. When transcribing from written materials, an edited transcription also corrects spelling and punctuation and can make the spoken words sound more formal.

Yet, edited transcription doesn't apply to everything. Let's say you're transcribing an autobiography recorded by the author. In the following example, we highlight how using edited transcription would change the author's voice.

Unedited: "My mama told us — me and my brother and sis, 'Y'all shouldn't complain about having to eat your veggies at suppertime.'"

Edited: "My mother told me and my siblings not to complain about having to eat vegetables at dinner."

2. Verbatim transcription

Verbatim transcription is the written form of spoken language converted from video and audio files. It captures every sound made, including throat clearing and verbal pauses such as "ah," "um," and "uh." It indicates when laughter and noises occur, such as a phone ringing or a door slamming.

This can be indispensable when translating a video or an audio recording produced in legal settings, in which every detail, including pauses and non-verbal sounds, can be significant.

Non-verbatim transcription, in comparison, may omit laughter and background noises, verbal pauses, and throat clearing, and clean up incomplete sentences. 

Imagine this witness testimony (a fictitious scenario created solely for illustrative purposes) in verbatim and non-verbatim transcription styles. Which transcription style do you think should be used? The answer probably depends on whether or not you're the defense attorney:

Verbatim: "I ah saw the er red (snickering) pickup truck hit the uh (six-second silent pause) the pedestrian."

Non-verbatim:  "I saw the red pickup truck hit the pedestrian."

In this legal context, the verbatim transcription provides potentially important information about the witness's demeanor and hesitation, which could be helpful for assessing credibility or understanding the full context of the testimony.

Or suppose you're transcribing statements from videos of your CEO for the annual report, and her fourth-quarter earnings audio includes some coughing and throat clearing due to a cold. This example highlights why verbatim transcription isn't the right choice:

Verbatim: "We not only beat our fourth-quarter (sniffing, clears throat) earnings projections but exceeded our projections for the first three quarters (cough) as well."

Non-verbatim: "We not only beat our fourth-quarter earnings projections but exceeded our projections for the first three quarters as well."

For corporate reports and most business communications, non-verbatim transcription is more appropriate, as it focuses on the content of the message rather than extraneous sounds or speech patterns. This approach ensures clarity and professionalism in formal documents while still accurately conveying the intended information.

3. Intelligent verbatim transcription

Intelligent verbatim transcription edits out distracting fillers and repetitions from the spoken word. The intent is to provide a more concise, readable transcript while staying true to the participants' voices and intended meanings. This balances the accuracy of verbatim transcription with the clarity of non-verbatim transcription, making it ideal for many business and professional contexts.

Examples of adjustments made with intelligent verbatim transcription include:

• Filler words. Unnecessary words such as "you know," "yeah," "like," and "hey" are removed.
• Non-standard words. In these instances, the transcriptionist removes or adjusts non-standard words such as ain't, irregardless, dunno, and supposably.
• Repeating words or sentences. Stuttering and words otherwise unintentionally repeated are edited out during intelligent verbatim transcription. So are distracting, redundant sentences or phrases that unnecessarily say the same thing.
• Long, run-on sentences and ramblings. These issues are often resolved in a transcription by creating one or more sentences to convey the information in a more readable way.
• Irrelevant or off-topic sentences or conversation. People often go off-topic for a moment or make an off-the-cuff remark when speaking. Intelligent verbatim translation cleans this up.
• Removes pauses, coughing, and general noises. Anything irrelevant to the topic or that interferes with the voice of the person speaking can be omitted, including nonverbal and verbal pauses, background noises, and coughing or sniffling.

Intelligent verbatim transcription is particularly valuable in business communications, such as conference calls, interviews, or presentations, where clarity and professionalism are essential. It preserves the speaker's intended message and tone while enhancing readability.

However, for legal documentation or situations requiring exact replication of speech patterns, full verbatim transcription remains the preferred choice and is sometimes required.

4. Phonetic transcription

Phonetic transcription notes the way spoken words are pronounced using phonetic symbols.

Although the English language has 26 letters in its alphabet, there are around 44 unique sounds called phonemes, defined as the smallest unit of speech that can make one word different from another. For example, a single phoneme distinguishes "cat" from "bat."

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a standardized representation of speech sounds in a written form that applies to all languages. For example, the noun dish has four letters, but the IPA presents this as three sounds: /dɪʃ/, where [ʃ] stands for the "sh" sound.

Phonetic transcription is especially useful in:

• Sociolinguistics. Researchers use phonetic transcription to study how language varies across social groups and geographic regions. It helps capture dialect-specific pronunciations that standard spelling might miss. For example, a study on African American Vernacular English and some dialects in the Southern states might use phonetic transcription to accurately represent features like the pronunciation of "th" as "d" in words like "this" (dis) or "that" (dat), known as "th-fronting."
• Historical linguistics. Phonetic transcription documents changes in pronunciation over time, such as shifts observed between Old and Middle English. It plays a key role in understanding historical sound changes like the Great Vowel Shift.
• Language learning and speech therapy. Educators and therapists use phonetic transcription to pinpoint pronunciation issues and guide effective intervention. It's particularly useful for accent reduction and second language acquisition, where sound-by-sound analysis supports more targeted learning.

Transcription process and workflow

A successful transcription project follows a series of typical steps to ensure accuracy, readability, and usability. Here is a breakdown of the typical transcription process and workflow:

1. Start with a clear audio or video file. The process begins with a recorded file that contains the content to be transcribed. High-quality audio improves the accuracy and efficiency of transcription.
2. Convert speech to text. Transcriptionists or AI-based transcription software transcribe the spoken words into written form. This step may involve differentiating between speakers and identifying difficult terms.
3. Edit and proofread the transcript. Proofreaders check for punctuation, grammar, context, and readability. They refine the document to meet the intended use, whether for legal, academic, or corporate purposes.
4. Apply transcription conventions. Skilled professionals incorporate formatting rules, such as square brackets for non-speech sounds, ellipses for omitted words, and timestamps to aid navigation.
5. Use freelancers to enhance quality. Independent transcriptionists can tackle complex tasks like recognizing industry jargon, refining tone, and managing multiple speakers — areas where AI may fall short.
6. Optimize audio quality upfront. Reducing background noise, using external microphones, and recording in quiet environments can significantly improve transcription accuracy and reduce the need for time-consuming revisions.

Tools and AI transcription software

There are several options available when choosing how to transcribe audio files.

Human transcription services

Professional transcriptionists deliver highly accurate transcripts because they understand context, dialects, and specialized terminology. They're especially valuable for health care and legal transcription, where small mistakes can have major consequences.

AI transcription software

Automated tools offer speed and affordability, making them ideal for beginners or businesses that need to process bulk audio files. However, AI often struggles with poor audio quality, stutters, heavy accents, or background noise. Proofreading is usually required to produce accurate transcripts.

Thought leadership in transcription suggests rapid improvements in speech-to-text models. Future AI transcription may handle filler words, false starts, and background noise more effectively. It can also work with video content, where transcripts automatically generate closed captions or subtitles for platforms like YouTube.

Hybrid workflows

Many teams now combine AI transcription with freelancers. AI tools create a quick draft transcript, and then transcriptionists proofread, correct punctuation, and edit for readability. This workflow balances efficiency with accuracy.

Pricing considerations

AI transcription is often billed per minute and costs significantly less than human transcription, which may be billed per hour or per project. The right option depends on your budget, deadlines, and the kind of transcription you need.

Bring transcription into your workflow with Upwork

Transcription is a powerful tool that improves accessibility, supports knowledge sharing, and streamlines workflows across industries. From podcasts and video content to medical dictation and depositions, choosing the right type of transcription ensures that the final document matches its purpose.

While AI transcription software offers efficiency, human transcriptionists and freelancers bring accuracy, context, and readability to transcripts. The best results often come from combining the two.

Ready to get started? Hire professional transcriptionists on Upwork to create accurate, polished transcripts tailored to your needs. Upwork also helps you find work as a transcriptionist.

FAQs about transcribing examples

Readers often have practical questions about transcription, especially when choosing between AI tools and human transcription services.

What is the most accurate kind of transcription?

Verbatim transcription is considered the most accurate because it captures every utterance, pause, and background sound. However, "accuracy" depends on context, and sometimes an intelligent or edited transcript better represents the intended meaning for business or publishing purposes.

How do transcriptionists handle background noise or unclear speech?

Transcriptionists typically use timestamps and square brackets to mark unclear sections, such as [inaudible] or [laughter]. Skilled professionals may replay audio multiple times or use specialized software to filter background noise. High-quality audio recordings make this process much easier.

What's the difference between verbatim and non-verbatim transcription?

Verbatim transcription includes everything: filler words, false starts, stutters, and background noises. Non-verbatim, often called edited transcription, removes distractions to improve readability. The choice depends on whether precision or clarity is more important for the transcript's purpose.

Can AI transcription replace human transcriptionists?

Not often. AI transcription software has improved significantly, especially for clear audio and single-speaker recordings. However, it still struggles with accents, technical terms, and poor audio quality. Human transcriptionists are essential for legal, health care, and professional contexts where accurate transcripts are critical.

How should beginners start transcribing audio files?

Beginners can start with AI transcription tools to practice editing draft transcripts. From there, focusing on punctuation, readability, and consistent use of timestamps helps build skill. Many beginners also gain experience by proofreading transcripts for more experienced transcriptionists.