The style of transcription depends greatly on why the transcript is required and the lingo the client is used to, which can vary. It always pays to clarify what a client means when they request a style.
A clean transcription or a conversational transcription, or intelligent verbatim to some, is ‘cleaned’ up. It leaves out words and phrases such as ‘like’, ‘you know’, ‘sort of’, ums and ahs and any other word repetitive sentence fillers that do not add context, as well as false starts and stutters. Interviewer listening responses are also omitted. Part words and stutters are not included. A clean transcript does not include external words and non-word vocalisations, such as [laughs], [phone rings], etcetera. Some clients do not want sentences to begin with “and” or “so”. Click here to see an example of a clean transcript.
Verbatim does not include ums and ahs but does contain all word content, word stutters, part words and false starts. It does not record vocalisations such as [laughs], or interviewer responses unless requested by the client. but once again, “verbatim” can mean different things to different people. Click here to see an example of a verbatim transcript.
A strict verbatim transcript includes everything, from Intelligent Verbatim aspects mentioned above such as all words, word stutters, part words and false starts, but it also includes all lengthy pauses of five seconds or more, external sounds and vocalisations. These are represented in the present tense such as [pauses] [laughs] [coughs] [phone rings] [cries] etcetera. All responses, whether they be from the interviewer or the interviewee are to be recorded. Click here to see an example of a strict verbatim transcript.
