It happens to the best of us: You accept an editing job, thinking it looked fine and should be a quick one. It did look fine, at a glance. However, as soon as you start working, you realize that the transcript was done by a 300 pounds gorilla wearing boxing gloves. And then corrections we typed by a python using its tongue.
Following are three quick tips I found useful to finish the job within deadline and with my sanity mostly intact
1. MASS REPLACEMENT
Luckily, typos are usually consistent within one transcriber's work: He or she will keep on making the same mistakes, over and over again. Your friend here is "REPLACE ALL" - at least as long as the error is obvious. Someone writing "SCUZZY" for "SCSI" in a technical paper, for instance. So scan the transcript, and do a mass replace. Repeat and rinse.
2. IT'S'N'ITS
"its" instead of "it's" is probably one of the worse offenders, made worse because there is little to do but review all of them one by one. Impossible to mass replace! What I do to accelerate the process is copy a "it's" and keep that in "pasting memory" (whatever your operating system calls it). I then do some FIND, and FIND NEXT, using keyboard commands. If "its" is right, I do FIND NEXT and move on. When "ITS" should be "IT'S", I do a paste, again using key commands, and correct it instantly. Then, on to the next one.
3. THE ROCK
You've seen this one: One BIG block of text running on and on. With luck, at least some of the punctuation will be correct. To correct it, and do a quick reflow, I look for patterns in the speaker's dialect: Speakers have recognizable speech patterns, and often like to start introducing discreet ideas using their pet transitional expressions. Look for breaks in concepts or topics, and try to define the "starting block." If the speaker starts topical section by using some "And then,", or something like that, a REPLACE ALL using "
Posted by MTEQC.COM
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