Digital Transcription Equipment

Doctors, lawyers, authors, and busy executives all rely heavily on digital transcription equipment.  In days gone by, executives relied on dictation.  They spoke their letters or memos out loud while an attentive secretary wrote the messages down, usually in an abbreviated script known as shorthand.  For after hours messages, or high-volume messages going to many different places, the message was often recorded and supplied to the secretary at a later time.  She subsequently listened to the message and typed it up.  This process was so commonplace that specialized equipment, the Dictaphone, was developed to facilitate it.
Dictation has largely been replaced by e-mail, now.  Executives are expected to compose their own messages and send them out instantly.  An exception is found in the medical profession, where the process is now known as transcription and the person performing the transcription is known as a medical transcriber.  Physicians use a digital recorder to comment on a patient’s test results, office visit findings, medical history, etc…  This digital dictation can be heard by a transcriber and typed into the patients’ files, but this is still a slow process compared to the modern alternative.
The modern, state of the art alternative to dictation and transcription services is transcription software, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking Voice Recognition Software, Quikscribe, Zydoc or Express Scribe.  These software programs recognize human speech patterns and convert spoken words to written text.  The coding is very complex and involves the use of standardized expressions for indicating various punctuations and formats.  Additionally, each software program must be customized to the voice of the speaker prior to initial use in order to get the best results.  This is necessary because people from different regions or areas have differing dialects or accents.
Grammar filters have made modern software transcription applications very intuitive.  In the early days of transcription software, before there was even a word to describe what it did, the software would have no way of knowing whether a word was “right,” or “Wright” or “write.”   However, modern grammar algorithms have long since overcome these issues.  The software usually distinguishes between the use of “two” or “to” or “too” by the way the word is grammatically used.
Many dictation applications now do not even transcribe spoken word to text, but instead record snippets of MP3 or WAV files as sounds embedded directly into the document.  Parties in a legal dispute can’t really argue that their statements were mistyped when it’s their own words, in their own voice, called up later for review.  However, the need for transcription will never go away.  For one thing, sound files are larger than text and take more storage space.  For another, text is more useful in many applications, because it can be copied and edited, presented to wide audiences in specialized formats and mass produced in inexpensive media that is ready for mass distribution.

Doctors, lawyers, authors, and busy executives all rely heavily on digital transcription equipment.  In days gone by, executives relied on dictation.  They spoke their letters or memos out loud while an attentive secretary wrote the messages down, usually in an abbreviated script known as shorthand.  For after hours messages, or high-volume messages going to many different places, the message was often recorded and supplied to the secretary at a later time.  She subsequently listened to the message and typed it up.  This process was so commonplace that specialized equipment, the Dictaphone, was developed to facilitate it.

Dictation has largely been replaced by e-mail, now.  Executives are expected to compose their own messages and send them out instantly.  An exception is found in the medical profession, where the process is now known as transcription and the person performing the transcription is known as a medical transcriber.  Physicians use a digital recorder to comment on a patient’s test results, office visit findings, medical history, etc…  This digital dictation can be heard by a transcriber and typed into the patients’ files, but this is still a slow process compared to the modern alternative.

The modern, state of the art alternative to dictation and transcription services is transcription software, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking Voice Recognition Software, Quikscribe, Zydoc or Express Scribe.  These software programs recognize human speech patterns and convert spoken words to written text.  The coding is very complex and involves the use of standardized expressions for indicating various punctuations and formats.  Additionally, each software program must be customized to the voice of the speaker prior to initial use in order to get the best results.  This is necessary because people from different regions or areas have differing dialects or accents.

Grammar filters have made modern software transcription applications very intuitive.  In the early days of transcription software, before there was even a word to describe what it did, the software would have no way of knowing whether a word was “right,” or “Wright” or “write.”   However, modern grammar algorithms have long since overcome these issues.  The software usually distinguishes between the use of “two” or “to” or “too” by the way the word is grammatically used.

Many dictation applications now do not even transcribe spoken word to text, but instead record snippets of MP3 or WAV files as sounds embedded directly into the document.  Parties in a legal dispute can’t really argue that their statements were mistyped when it’s their own words, in their own voice, called up later for review.  However, the need for transcription will never go away.  For one thing, sound files are larger than text and take more storage space.  For another, text is more useful in many applications, because it can be copied and edited, presented to wide audiences in specialized formats and mass produced in inexpensive media that is ready for mass distribution.

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