Verbatim Policies

It is very important that we transcribe and translate all jobs VERBATIM. We are educating our clients on this policy. We type all Spanish jobs as they are dictated. It is SpeakWrite policy that we do not alter, edit or change the content of any Spanish Interview.

Verbatim Policy Spanish jobs are to be typed verbatim. This applies to the transcription as well as the translation of Spanish Interviews.

Your work will be reviewed for the accuracy of the transcription as well as the English translation. It will be required that audited jobs meet our standard of less than 5% error rate for non-proofread jobs and less than 3% error rate on proofread jobs. That being said, translation and voice-recognition software is strictly prohibited. Your contract with SpeakWrite will be at risk if you use any software other than SpeakWrite's TypeEasy and Microsoft Word to do any job. For more information on error rates, click here.

Below is an example of how to transcribe and translate audio verbatim:

Audio	Verbatim Spanish/English	Translation

Audio	Verbatim Spanish/English	Translation
Ya, So, ¿tú sabes que paso el, la, hace un mes? ¿viernes?	Ya, So, ¿tú sabes que paso el, la, hace un mes? ¿viernes?	Ya, So, do you know the, what happened the, a month ago? Friday?

Do not forget to add exactly the words as he/she said:

The example above the officer said "YA" he never said "YEAH". So, we can’t fix his/her words and since "YA" is not a word to be translated we DO NOT FIX the translation on the English side and we leave it AS IT IS. Then the officer asks the question and he stutters and uses “EL, LA” ( this is very common in most audios. The Officers are making an effort to speak SPANISH but we do need to remember to translate those stutters. )

Other Verbatim Policies:

We NEVER translate nicknames. See the below example. We may be familiar with some characters, or common nicknames but we do not know that these nicknames can be translated. Nicknames should be treated as regular names per our policies. We leave the nickname as it is in Spanish when we type it on the translation side.

Audio	Verbatim Spanish/English	Translation / INCORRECT per SpeakWrite policies

Audio	Verbatim Spanish/English	Translation / INCORRECT per SpeakWrite policies
El se llama Pitufo.	El se llama Pitufo.	His name is Smurf.

Audio	Verbatim Spanish/English	Translation / CORRECT per SpeakWrite policies

Audio	Verbatim Spanish/English	Translation / CORRECT per SpeakWrite policies
El se llama Pitufo.	El se llama Pitufo.	His name is Pitufo.

Mixed Spanish and English Policy

If a speaker mixes English and Spanish words in the Spanish portion of an interview, transcribe it as is (verbatim). Do not correct the broken Spanish and then translate that into English.

CLIENT SAYS:	VERBATIM PORTION	ENGLISH PORTION

CLIENT SAYS:	VERBATIM PORTION	ENGLISH PORTION
Tú te acuerdas de lo que paso ayer como a las. Was it 5:50 in the morning?	Tú te acuerdas de lo que paso ayer como a las. Was it 5:50 in the morning?	Do you remember what happened yesterday around, was it 5:50 in the morning?

Recorded/automated voices should be formatted in bold.