Transcription Service Blog by Transcription Institute

Unfinished novel by Vladimir Nabokov "The Original of Laura" should have been released on November 3 this year. The son and a sole heir of the writer, mister Dmitri Nabokov, now livies in Switzerland, decided nevertheless to publish the draft of the work.

Before his death in 1977, Nabokov requested that the manuscript was left unfinished and novel was destroyed. For 30 years, drafts were stored on 138 library cards in the bank vault in Switzerland, but the son decided not to "take on the role of literary arsonist."

Penguin Classics has decided not to edit and build the print upon the manuscript. On one side of the sheet will be printed card, so that the reader could see the handwriting of the writer, on the other - the transcription of the text cards. Despite the fact that the text is not edited and suffers some limitations, according to chief editor of publishing Alexis Kirschbaum, admirers of Vladimir Nabokov, read it with great interest, because in almost every line the hand of genius is visible.

It was reported earlier that the "ABC" publisher may print "Laura" in Russian in 2009, but it was unclear whether it will be realized, given that the English book will be released only in November.

In addition, in November 2010 and Penguin Classics will publish a collection of poems, and poems by Nabokov, previously released in the UK. A year later readers can read the letter from the writer's wife Vera.

 The Plot

Although the contents of the last works of Nabokov still kept in the strictest secrecy, fragments of "Laura" saw the writer's biographer Brian Boyd. At one time, he advised his wife Vera Nabokov's son Dmitri and not to publish the manuscript. However, in January this year, suddenly changed his mind.

According to Boyd, "is a masterpiece of technical skill, just like the later works of Shakespeare, where he is concentrating expands the boundaries of his own method."

The text of the manuscript and saw other people, although they can be counted on the fingers. If, however, to interview all those who are least able to touch the content of the manuscript, we can derive the storyline. Protagonist Philip Wilde, an extremely corpulent scholar married to a slender and windy woman named Flora, which is insanely promiscuity. Wild Flora originally liked just because it looked like another woman - Aurora Leigh. Generally, the image of Death in the product is a leitmotif.

The book begins with a description of the party, followed by four more scenes, after which the novel is divided into fragments. It is not known how old the Wild, but it did not leave the thought of death, and he decides to kill himself by meditation.

The History of Creation

Vladimir Nabokov began work on "original Laura" shortly before his death, when he was seriously ill. At 50 index cards a great writer, poet, entomologist and the player has recorded only a general outline of the novel. There he put a note with the direct instruction that the cards should be destroyed. New unfinished novel was mentioned in the diaries, Nabokov, December 1, 1974, when he writes to memory the name "die - it's fun." By 3 April 1976 a working title changed to The Opposite of Laura - "The opposite of Laura, in short TOOL, but from another diary entry, it follows that Nabokov is moving" at a speed of 5.6 cards per day, but a lot of rework. "

After two months or more, 17 June 1976, Nabokov catches an infection that was never diagnosed, and treated in hospital. By this time his mind had already formed an image of the future of the novel, and wandered for six weeks, Nabokov imagines the novel reads like students, among them "peacocks, doves, long-dead parents, two cypresses, several young nurses, squatting around and family physician - from senility almost invisible.

Before her death, Nabokov turned to his wife with a request to destroy all cards with the outline of the novel. However, his last wish was not fulfilled. Dmitri Nabokov believes that if his father really wanted his novel saw the light, he would destroy it himself.

Recall that Nabokov is the author of novels "Masha", "Camera Obscura", "Dar", "Lolita," "Pnin," a book of memoirs, "Other Shore. He translated into English, "The Lay of Igor" and "Eugene Onegin". In 1961 Nabokov moved to Switzerland. Vladimir Nabokov died on July 2, 1977 at the age of 78 years.

What is transcription: a process of conversion of spoken words to written words, handwriting, images of text into pure word transcripts.

Transcription services are used to any business industry in need of having audio or video speeches, files, cassette transcribed. From dictation to interviews, orations to focus groups, transcribing services is completely planned to meet your specific needs. Transcription services are helpful for many companies of medical, legal, financial, media, music, or other business industries areas.

Pros of outsorcing your transcription needs overseas:

• No recruiting, hiring, training expenses and no setup fees
• Save you valuable time, efforts and resources
• Reduce capital infrastructure costs
• Get access to specialized skills, technology, services and proven methodologies
• Save cost up to 60% or even more

Cons of outsourcing:

• Outsourcing will not remove the responsibility from management and administrative burden
• There is no benefits in time zone difference. In fact that difference can play to your disadvantages, when you need to reach other semi-sphere to inquire when the transcript is going to be prepared for you, and get no answer...
• Questionable fast turnaround time with high quality. Often turnaround time is below to what was promissed, and the quality is bad.
• Never guaranteed accuracy. Many transcriptions require text comprehension and understanding available ONLY through the work of local native speakers.
• Never 24/7 customer support
  

Today Twitter was overfloated with messages about closed captioner suing her employer after termination for adding gay subtext to several TV shows. Twitter didn't want or didn't care much to look at the very bottom of this message to see the following footer: This is a Fake Gay News post — part of series of satirical blog posts about entertainment. That means it's (mostly) not true.

Well, not so fast, you guys... The news was may be not so true, but in reality, what if you got someone's transcription work in and didn't check the accuracy. Did you ever think through on plan B: What's going to happen next?

Nothing, if you work with Transcription Institute. Because before we submit all work, it goes through a multiple level of proofreading, to assure quality of transcription. Certainly, there are many recordings out there with the quality below average, where it is almost impossible to have a clear cut on what was said, thus, provide accurate transcription; however, we will always let you know how accurate we can be, so you trust our professional expertise.

Whether you're a large transcription services company or small business with one or several  or no employees, you may be required by State or Federal laws, or your vendors/subcontractors, to carry insurance.

In this article we're going to review what type of insurance you may need, how much it could cost, and where you can get coverage.

General Overview

There are many insurance companies in the U.S. And you don't have to shop all of them for insurance to get the best deal, however, we recommend you contact several brokers for quotes and than compare coverage and pricing. Personally for business insurance and workers compensation we use and recommend Paperless Insurance Services. They are brokers, who have access to multiple insurance companies and provide comprehensive and competitive insurance coverage we can afford.

For transcription service business there are 3 types of most common insurance:

1. General Liability or Business Owners Policy: covers bodily injury or property damage losses. General liability insurance will pay for legal representation in the court, litigation, and damages. Business Owners Policy also includes coverage for your business personal property against thefts, fire, and other common causes that can destroy it. Usually, the premium is low and starts from $250 for General Liability only and $500 for Business Owners Policy.

 Case example: Say you have an office and your clients stop by to drop off some tapes or discs for transcription and flips over a step. You call for emergency and possibly, later, being sued for bodily injury.  General Liability should help.

 Case example: your expensive equipment for transcription is stolen or destroyed by fire. Insurance company will pay for new equipment and for lost income, while equipment was in the process of ordering, shipping, installing etc... 

Common Limits: $1,000,000 per occurrence

2. Workers Compensation: if you have employees you're required to carry Workers Compensation insurance. This coverage will provide payments for medical bills and lost wages, and rehabilitation for employees injured when performing their job duties. In some States you must provide the Workers Comp. coverage for subcontractors as well. Please consult with your local authorities. The cost of Workers Compensation should not be high, and is regulated in each State. In California, for example, the rate is 0.6 per $100 of payroll. Another words, you're paying $6 for each $1000 of payroll. There are certain minimum premium requirements with each carrier in each State, but generally speaking, Workers Comp. starts from $525/yr.

Limits: Each U.S. State has own workers compensation insurance law and limits required on the policy.

 Case example: Say, similar accident happens with your employee, who is trapping over a broken step.  Workers Compensation should help.

3. Professional Liability, also known as Errors and Omissions:  this is the coverage that provides payments for unintentional errors or omissions in your work.

 Case example: You work with a School District and transcribe lectures for school teachers, so later the school district can publish new textbooks. A mistake has been made in transcription and is discovered after 50,000 textbooks are printed. Now the School District has to print those again... And guess who is paying for that? Right, your professional liability insurance.

 Case example: You work with a lawyer and transcribe testimonies and make mistakes... Oh, you don't want mess with that...

Limits: $1,000,000 per occurrence.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:

This is not an offer for insurance. Please contact your licensed broker to obtain actual quotes.

Case examples are fictitious. Insurance claims are reviewed on a case by case basis and availability coverage is not guaranteed.

We're not legal advisers. Please consult with your legal adviser to learn how a lack of insurance coverage may affect your business operations, and what are the appropriate coverage limits and options for you operations. 

With the new innovations more people are working from home, or working from the road.  All of this work is done through the internet and through the phone.  And a lot of times people don’t know how to run a phone conference.  Trust me; I’ve set in on a lot of those meetings.  So, I decided to write some steps that will help with organizing a phone conference in a more structured way.

Send out the agenda before the meeting

The key to an effective meeting is an agenda - this applies to any kind of meeting, not just a conference call. Make sure you send out the details of the call in number in advance, and make sure it stands out, so the participants will not miss it.  If you using Outlook send out meeting using the tools that are built in, it will help you track and be aware of who is attending your meeting, and it will do all the work for the participants for them by filling in their calendar slot with your meeting.

If the conference call is a regular status update, ensure you also send out the meeting notes from the previous call.  In that case the first item on the agenda should be checking in with people up for the actions they've agreed to be responsible for in the previous meeting.

Introductions and details

At the beginning of the call introduce any newcomers to the rest of the group and invite them to spend a couple of minutes describing themselves and their role on the call.

Next, ensure everyone has a copy of the agenda. I suggest recording the conversation, so later one you can hire a transcription services company to transcribe the entire conversation. This serves two benefits: firstly, everyone will be more careful and accountable for what they say, and secondly, a single set of meeting notes will be distributed after the transcription of the meeting is complete.

Finally, lay out the rules for interaction on the call. Because it's audio-only, the usual cues we use to indicate that we wish to take a turn at speaking are not present.  Since you recording the call ask people to say they name before they speak so it is easier for the transcriptionist, and your notes are clearer. Clearly it's unrealistic to expect people to stick to the interaction rules for the duration of the call, but laying them out at the outset will help ensure things run quickly and smoothly.

Keep it short

Studies have shown that people start to suffer a number of unpleasant side-effects after holding a telephone receiver to their ear for longer than about an hour. In any event, forty minutes is about the limit of most people's concentration span.

If you find the call is starting to drag on beyond an hour, it's a good idea to wrap things up and continue at another time. If you find this is a regular occurrence, it may be an indicator that you need to revisit the agenda, or possibly split the group up into separate, more focused groups. A particular time-waster is having engineers and businesspeople on the same conference call. A better way to handle this is to have three shorter meetings - one with just the engineers, one with the businesspeople, and one with single representatives from each group to present the results and take any feedback to the next department meeting. Remember practice makes perfect, so get on the phone and schedule some meetings.

Focus groups are structured small group interviews. The people that are being interviewed are similar in some way (e.g., same views on certain topics, different background, part of the same community, or same financial standing). The purpose of the interview is to gather information about a particular topic guided by a set of focused questions. Participants hear and interact with each other and the leader (facilitator), which yields different information than if people were interviewed individually.  

The purpose of focus groups is to develop a broad and deep understanding rather than a quantitative summary. The emphasis is on insights, responses and opinions. Usually, there are eight to twelve participants. Multiple groups are recommended since each discussion is highly influenced by who is involved and the comments that surface. Focus groups typically run one to two hours.  In some cases it could run a whole day or two.  

For a focus group, you need to have a skillful facilitator (leader).  You may want to use an outside party if you a familiar with participants, so that they may feel freer with their comments when they do not know the facilitator.  Craft the set of questions and their order to flow as a natural conversation might.  Limit the number of questions; sequence the questions from broad to very specific. Prepare an assistant to take notes, and with permission of the group arrange for the video or audio recording of the discussion.  If you are recording the session, it’s best that people identify them selves’ before they speak, so that it’s easier for the transcriber to make the transcription of the document.  

The interview should consist of three parts: opening, questions, and the wrap up.  

In the opening section welcome everyone, make introductions, and thank the participants for coming and spending their time.  Review the purpose of the focus group interview.  Review the rules.  Explain to the participants that there is no right or wrong answers.  Even negative comments are useful in gaining the insight about the topic.  

In the interview section guide the participants into the questioning, beginning with the general question first.  As participants begin to share ideas, cycle through the group, ensuring that each participant has a chance to be heard. When comments related to one question are finished, summarize them, making sure there is agreement with the summary. Capitalize on unanticipated comments and useful directions the discussion may take.  Probe and move flexibly into unplanned aspects of the topic but be careful about unnecessary or irrelevant divergences. 

In the wrap up section summarize the discussion, give participants a chance to say one last thing about the topic, and what they thought was the important aspect of the conversation for them.  Thank participants for joining you, and remind them how the information will be used.  Offer to send them the transcript of the conversation once it’s available.   

Once you have the recording higher a qualified transcription services company to work on your focus group transcript.   

One of the toughest things in journalism is conducting interviews.  Of course finding a good story is tough, but once you find it what’s next.  The reason that interviews are tough is because not only you have to talk to people you also need to get certain information out of them. Sometimes you simply want to know what their experience has been; in other words, you want to collect their testimony as witnesses. Sometimes you want their expert opinion, sometimes their knowledge of the facts. One of the first steps in conducting an interview, after deciding who you want to interview, is to figure out which of these kinds of information you are after. Let's go through some of the things involved in planning and carrying out an interview.

Once you’ve selected a person that you want to talk to, consider what information you want to get.  It may even be a good idea to jot down a list of things to ask.  Make an appointment.  Call the person you wish to talk with in advance that he or she has time to get ready, but not so far in advance that their schedules are not yet developed.   When you make an appointment, introduce yourself, explain the purpose of your call, explain why you would like to talk with the person, and request permission to set a time and place.  If you will be recording the interview, and I strongly encourage you that you do, ask for permission to do so ahead of time.   

Do your homework.  Prepare for the interview by finding out about the person you will be interviewing and by preparing questions to ask.  Get yourself familiar with the topic and terminology.  If you want expert opinion, create more pointed questions, questions that suggest particular issues you would to explore.  Questions still need to be open ended.   Be willing to let the person drift off to a neighboring topic, because she or he may know more about the lay of the argument then you do, and when he or she may be giving you information you really wanted and didn’t know how to ask for.  Reserve a very general question for the end, something like, “have other things occurred to you during the interview that you would like to say at this time?”  If you want facts, make your questions as precise as possible, making it clear that you are after data.  It is important that the person you are interviewing know ahead of time that he or she will be asking such questions, because people seldom carry that kind of data around in their heads.  Reserve all your general questions for the end of the interview.

Be forthcoming when you meet, introducing yourself and briefly reminding the person why you wanted to talk. If you are unsure about how to spell the person's name, ask about that and about their official title.  As you ask the questions and listen to the responses, look at the person's face and eyes to show that you are interested and that you value what you're getting. From time to time make brief notes.  Try to get some direct quotes, saying something like, "I like the way you said that. Can I quote you?" And then get the words down in quotation marks.  Briefly summarize what you have covered and how you understand the information you have been given.  Thank the person for his or her time and willingness to share.  Don't linger. If you promised to take only 30 minutes, then stick to your schedule, but don't be rude. Say something like, "I promised to take only 30 minutes of your time, and I see I have. Is there any last thing you want to add before I go?" You might also say something like, "This has been very informative. If some other question occurs to me, may I get back in touch with you?"

When you leave, spend time immediately writing down notes, but don’t bury yourself in not taking.  Make sure you have the date and place of the interview.  Partner up with the transcription services company, so that you have the transcript of your interview in a timely manner, proof read your interview.

VoiceWalker is a transcriber's tool, designed to help you transcribe audio or video recordings. VoiceWalker lets you play back the sound in a controlled way, with the benefit of being able to systematically step (or "walk") through a recording, repeating short segments for a specified number of repetitions, then moving on to the next segment. The segments overlap, so that the transcriber does not become disoriented.

VoiceWalker assumes that you have digitized your recordings as computer files to work with them more easily (for information on how to digitize, see the VoiceWalker manual).

VoiceWalker is free, available for Windows only. There are two versions:

Version 2.0 supports WAV files for all functions, and also plays Windows AVI files and Quicktime MOV files. (This version was written in Visual Basic.)
DOWNLOAD VoiceWalker 2.0 (3.0 MB)

Version 1.0 is very similar in functionality to version 2.0, but supports only audio (WAV files). It has a few different features from those implemented in 2.0, so you may wish to try both to see which works better for you. (This version was written in SumTotal's ToolBook.)
DOWNLOAD VoiceWalker 1.0 (4.0 MB)

VoiceWalker manual. The easiest way to learn to use VoiceWalker is to just try it out. Click on all the buttons and see what they do - since VoiceWalker never modifies your files, but only plays them back, you can do no harm. To learn more about VoiceWalker, you will find that all the features are fully documented in the VoiceWalker manual.
DOWNLOAD VoiceWalker Manual in pdf (0.2 MB)