Transcriber Expectations

Activity: We expect you to complete at least one job in any given 30-day time frame to prevent your account from being suspended due to inactivity. If, for ANY reason (including lack of available work), you are unable to meet these requirements, please fill out an Inactivity Form to notify our team of your inability to work. See TM Basics and Policies for more detailed expectations and activity requirements.

Accuracy: You are expected to capture all speech relevant to the audio without paraphrasing, editing, or otherwise changing what the speakers say. Every effort should be made to make out even difficult audio. This includes not inserting [inaudible], [crosstalk], or Guess tags where the speech can be made out.

Consistency: Each job must be consistent within itself in regards to punctuation, numbers, symbols, spelling of names and terms, etc.

Research: Every name, company, and term mentioned in the audio should be researched to determine the correct spelling and formatting. If there is more than one accepted spelling, choose one and be consistent.

Professionalism: You are expected to have a strong grasp of correct sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. Be sure to thoroughly proofread for typos or formatting errors before submission. Jobs should not begin with a capital letter (unless it is a proper noun that is always capitalized) or end with punctuation, even if you feel sure it is the beginning/end of a sentence.

Guidelines located to the right of your job must be strictly followed for each job. This includes basics such as adhering to our Clean Verbatim transcription style as well as using the appropriate spelling (i.e., US English or British English).

Communication: While you are working, we recommend that you keep tabs open for TM Watercooler and your email in case we need to contact you regarding a file you are working on or if you have a question or concern pertaining to your chunk. You should also strive to frequently check the Watercooler and your work email for other hub-related updates.

Starting and Ending a Chunk

Do not begin your chunk with a capital letter, unless it is a proper noun that is always capitalized, and do not end your chunk with punctuation or spaces. The QA who pieces the final file together may change this, but we ask that Transcribers leave that to the QA who has full context. It is fine if the final character of your chunk is a tag bracket because they're inseparable from the tag.

NO Timestamps or Speaker IDs

Never submit a job with timestamps or speaker IDs on the Jobs tab. To indicate a change of speaker, simply press Enter/Return once. Speaker identification will be added at a later stage, if at all.

Silent and Foreign Jobs

TranscribeMe does offer clients the option of bilingual transcription. At times, you may receive files with a mix of English and another language, and the Guidelines to the right of the screen may note that it is a bilingual file. Or you may receive a job that has very little speech and the rest is silent. In such cases, be sure to listen to the entire job from start to finish, transcribe any English speech, tag the rest as appropriate (namely, with the [foreign] or [silence] tag), then submit the job.

If you receive a job that is entirely silent or foreign, listen through the whole chunk to ensure there truly is no English speech to transcribe, tag with [foreign] or [silence] as appropriate, copy the entire four-number Job ID string, submit the job, then immediately send a ticket to the Help Desk using the purple beacon in the bottom corner of the screen (or email service@transcribeme.com), and be sure to include the four-number Job ID. If you forget to capture the full ID string, you can retrieve it from your Work History.

If your silent or foreign job is rejected after you reported it, please fill out a Job Rejection Inquiry so you can be reimbursed. Thank you for reporting!

If you receive multiple silent files in a row, please don't keep tagging and submitting them. Wait to hear back from the Help Desk to ensure it is not a technical issue on your side.

Early/Accidental Submissions

In the event that you accidentally submit a job prematurely, please IMMEDIATELY send a Help Desk ticket via the beacon at the bottom right of your WorkHub page, select (TR) Accidentally submitted a job as your situation, and include the job ID from your work history. They will be able to send the job back to the public queue to be transcribed correctly before the chunk goes to QA.

Note: In order to return the job to the queue (or to you; see below), the Shift Lead will have to reject it. This will show as a rejection for "Misheard words" in your Work History, but don't worry! It's not the same as a rejection for quality, and our admin team can tell the difference when looking at your work history.

Reminders

• Don't begin a job with a capital letter (unless the word is a proper noun), and don't end with punctuation.
• Never copy and paste into the WorkHub from an outside source.
• Check for updates on TM Watercooler.
• Early submission: If you accidentally submit a job before it was completed, please create a Help Desk ticket immediately and include the Job ID, found on your work history page. An admin will be able to send it back to you to complete or back to the queue to be transcribed.
• Silent file: If you come across a job that is all or mostly silent, please tag with [silence], submit, then immediately raise a ticket with the Help Desk and include the Job ID.
• Foreign files: If your full chunk is any language besides English, please tag with [foreign], submit, then immediately create a Help Desk ticket and include the Job ID. We sometimes receive files that are bilingual (the Guidelines will usually note this). Never transcribe the non-English parts.
• Activity: Remember that we require at least one submitted job in any given 30-day period. If you are approaching 4 weeks without submitting work, for any reason, be sure to fill out the Inactivity Form to prevent your account from being deactivated.