Transcription services, translation services, subtitling services, closed captioning services, live captioning services and note taking services.

Transcription Services and Our Audio Typists

Transcription City provide a number of highly skilled secretaries, translators, transcriptionists and audio typists that transform audio and video files from the spoken word into text. There are various gadgets that help them to do their job more efficiently like a food pedal and various software. But the typing is still a skill acquired through practice.
But how do they do it? How do our audio typists have their fingers race across those little letters on the keyboard at such speed without even looking at the actual keys? In the old days people learned how to type on typewriters and accuracy was important as you could not easily erase mistakes. Never mind the actual extra strength required in the hands and fingers to press the manual keys down to make the ink visible on the paper. Oh, the old sound of a loud typewriter rattling away at speed!

Transcription Services and Audio Typists – What’s your type?

These days computers have nicer keyboards and laptops have really soft keys. The software helps you by auto-correcting small mistakes automatically and makes everything look pretty with different fonts and colours. But what about the actual typing? That skill is acquired by typists when they learn to touch-type. That means that they learn to type without looking at the keyboard. They do this by first learning where keys are located on the keyboard itself. And they learn immediately not to look at the keyboard itself to find them. Run your fingers across your keyboard and you may find two little bumps on the letters f’ and j’. This is the typists compass’, which anchors their fingers always in the same place on the keyboard. From there they learn to type faster and faster by simply practising over and over again.

Eventually their brain remembers where the keys are and eventually almost types in auto-pilot mode. But interestingly here is that it is the muscle memory that internalises where the keys are and not necessarily the brain responsible for writing. What that means is that you will often find that typists can type as fast as the wind on the keyboard, but if you were to give them a blank keyboard and ask them to place the right letter stickers on each key, they would have trouble locating them with ease. Interesting, isn’t it? Even more astonishing is that bilingual people can adapt this. Doing so without even thinking when they switch from one language to another. Where sometimes that language has additional letters or a different layout on a keyboard. Their brains automatically switch over so they have no problem adapting to this.

The muscle memory training that comes through typing also improves movement and coordination, so not only are you typing, but you are also giving your muscles and your brain a little work-out. There you are, who said you needed to go to the gym?
If you would like to use the services of an audio typist or require transcription services, translation services, subtitling services or closed captioning services, why not get in touch? We are available around the clock and always happy to help.

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Samantha

Transcriptionist and Virtual Assistant. View all posts by Samantha