The only transcription services we've seen in action are the court reporters on TV legal dramas. So when we wanted to turn some digital audio files into a written document, we went hunting online.

It turns out there's a surfeit of transcription companies and freelancers: What was once a cottage industry that provided assistance to a handful of professionals -- think doctors taking "notes" by talking into tape recorders -- has now become a sizable business tapped by a wide range of users, from podcasters to students seeking to dissect a professor's lecture.

Lisa Haney

Fueling the demand over the past few years: the advent of digital audio (no more tapes to send back and forth) and the rise of outsourced labor (much of the work is done on the cheap by companies with offices abroad, particularly in India). Plus, in the online era, there's simply increased interest for all things written: Consider that within minutes of the conclusion of Tuesday's presidential debate, Web sites were posting transcripts of the exchange between the two candidates.

To put the new generation of transcribing firms to the test, we took the same set of interviews we recorded with chefs at a cooking competition, totaling 111 minutes of audio, and had it transcribed by five different companies we found through the Web. Most companies make it simple to submit the digital audio files online. To complicate matters, we chose interviews we knew posed problems because of background noise, speakers with thick foreign accents and a subject matter -- the culinary arts -- with plenty of semi-obscure terms and technical jargon.

We quickly discovered just how competitive the field has become. We were quoted rates ranging from a low of $55 to a high of $277.50 for the work, based on a turnaround time of one week. Many of the services can expedite jobs for a higher fee. But we eventually learned that price is not necessarily tied to quality. For that matter, we learned that regardless of cost, no service is 100% accurate.

Take the case of our most expensive firm, Michigan-based Oasis Office Support (which markets itself via the site The company, which charged $277.50, ended up having a greater error rate than some others, mangling not only the occasional challenging proper noun (a restaurant by the name of "Cafe du Parc" became "Cafe Debark"), but also basic phrases ("tomato salad" became "Camilla Salad"). The company also dropped words and phrases constantly. Granted, in most cases, it indicated the missing text in the transcript with a time marking, so we could easily find the passage ourselves on the audio file. But other transcribers were able to fill in a few of those same blanks.

A couple of services in the middle of the price spectrum delivered middle-of-the-road results. ISource Solutions, which promotes itself via the site and employs a team of up to 60 transcribers in India, charged $129.50. It seemed determined to capture every last phrase (the transcript was filled with lots of prefaces or interjections, such as "Right" and "Well, you know"). But it didn't make much of an attempt to understand the subject matter, so that "nouvelle" cuisine became "new vel" cuisine and "allsorts" licorice became "old sorts" licorice. It also was the only service to miss its promised delivery time, coming just a few hours past its three-day mark.

With GMR Transcription, another California company, we appreciated the company's frequent updates on the progress of our job, which ran $236.50: At any point, we could log into our account on the firm's Web site and see the status of each individual audio file, from "uploaded" to "assigned" to "downloaded." Plus, we got email alerts when each file was ready to be viewed. The transcribing was spot-on in some instances (some unusual last names -- say, Asprinio -- were spelled accurately), less so in others ("County" Road became "Downey" Road). Most problematic of all: In one instance, some comments were attributed to the wrong speaker.

If there was one company that seemed to take the most pains with accuracy, it was New Mexico-based CastingWords, which specializes in podcast transcriptions but welcomes clients of all kinds. A company spokesman says they build in "a very large number of review stages" and "keep most of our transcribing in the United States." (Companies that use transcribers based in India or elsewhere abroad will concede that American English is very much its own "language.") The attention to detail showed in our order: We were constantly surprised that phrases or names that other companies missed, from "tabula rasa" to "turducken" (it's a Cajun specialty), were identified and spelled correctly. Moreover, the transcript pointed to key non-verbal details in an exchange, such as the laughter that followed a remark. But its accuracy came with a price: Our order ran $249.75, making CastingWords the second-most-expensive company we tapped.

And the cheapest? It was a service we found through Elance, an online company that connects customers to freelance contractors in a variety of fields, from graphic design to, yes, transcription, through a bid process. After posting our job, we heard from about a half-dozen services. We decided to take a chance on the cheapest provider, who charged $55.50 and offered the fastest turnaround time (a mere two days). While the work was far from perfect -- more "old sorts" licorice and the like -- the service often performed better than our most expensive one. Clearly, it pays to shop around.

CastingWords$249.75 to complete the project within six days; our order was done in four.The most accurate and detailed of all our services. Many difficult-sounding proper names were correctly noted -- and the transcript best captured the ebb and flow of the conversation. That said, mistakes still occurred.If you're not in a particular rush, company offers a "budget" service that runs half of what we paid. But the timeframe for completion can be "a month or more."
GMR Transcription$236.50 to complete the project within five days; our order was done in three.Not as accurate as CastingWords, but still got many obscure names right. Our big nit: At one point, the transcription failed to identify the proper speaker.As with other companies, GMR charges a premium for "difficult" audio (i.e. anything that involves background noise, low-speaking voices, foreign accents, etc.).
iSource Solutions$129.50 to complete the project within three days; our order arrived a few hours late.So-so. Service had lots of problems with culinary terms and ingredients, but won points for completeness, as it attempted to notate even the slightest interjections.Need a digital recorder? The company provides one free to medical providers if they're committing to $1,000 in transcribing services.
Oasis Office Support$277.50 to complete the project within three days; our order was done in three.Given this was the most expensive service we tapped, we were hoping for better. There were many gaps in the transcript (albeit ones noted with time markings) and company took occasional liberties in editing out portions it deemed unimportant.Company's Web site was not as sophisticated as some others, since it didn't allow you to upload audio files or track the progress of your job directly on it.
Elance$55.50 to complete project within two days; our order was done in two.OK for the money. Lots of tricky names and technical culinary terms were clearly a stretch for the low-cost Elance provider we hired. But we knew that was a likely risk when we entered the agreement.The beauty of Elance is that you can find your freelance provider in different ways -- by posting a job and considering offers or by scrolling through hundreds of listings in search of the right contractor.