iSoftStone

iwanttoberich

What constitutes an utterance? Is it the entire line?

WeAreGhosts

extraJam wrote: »

I assume that's 4.7p per utterance (0.047p would be a bit low ) ?

Nope. Taken straight from the contract 0.047p

degreesofsep

I have just taken one hour 57 minutes to do a batch of 204 transcriptions. Yesterday one batch took one hour 53 minutes, another almost two and a half hours! The main reason for this was because well over 50% of the transcriptions were from non-English speaking people and it took as many as ten plays on some audios to interpret properly. And they haven't been QC checked yet, there is every chance I will have to go through them again to correct what they say are errors, so that's bringing the hourly rate down even further!!!!

I emailed my supervisor this morning asking if it is realistic to do 200 tasks in an hour , this is what he replied:

Hey Barry,

Many of transcribers are able to complete 1 task an hour, some are even able to complete 1 task with 40-50mins.

As you are new to the transcription software it may take some time to get use to the software.

Regards,

Chi Ming Man

So going by his fastest estimate that's an average of one transcription completed every 12 seconds, so listen to it, interpret it, type it and add tags!! Distinct whiff of cow manure methinks! (Can I say that BTW?! sorry if not)

And again this contract is meant to be for the UK market, I would expect maybe 10 to 15% to be from people with "non-English" accents in line with ethnic mix in our country (which I am proud we have such diversity), but to have in excess of 50% of audios with people with obviously non-English accents is far away from how the work was described.

I am going to stop doing it, I was hoping this might lead to a regular form of income, but not it the hourly rate is goint to be about £4 per hour.

So sorry to have gone on so much, but I am pretty angry about this and thought I would share with you guys so you can hopefully avoid getting sucked in too.

Maktina

ISS sounds even worse than my experiences at Appen. I'm glad I missed it, to be honest

Ghost_2005

degreesofsep wrote: »

Chi Ming Man

That sure is a cool name! Ding Dong.

How long have you been doing the transcription work? I'm guessing people's ears attune to listening to these things over time.

Maybe you need to give it time before you give up, although in my experience all these types of job are borderline minimum wage even when you are up to speed doing them.

There are pros and cons to work you can do from home and at hours to suit you. If the cons outweigh the pros then move on to something else.

iwanttoberich

degreesofsep wrote: »

I have just taken one hour 57 minutes to do a batch of 204 transcriptions. Yesterday one batch took one hour 53 minutes, another almost two and a half hours! The main reason for this was because well over 50% of the transcriptions were from non-English speaking people and it took as many as ten plays on some audios to interpret properly. And they haven't been QC checked yet, there is every chance I will have to go through them again to correct what they say are errors, so that's bringing the hourly rate down even further!!!!

Do they really make you do them over? I am just doing my first production set and wondering if they would still boot me out if I don't do well enough or if I will be allowed to continue in the hopes that I will improve after receiving feedback.

extraJam

degreesofsep wrote: »

I have just taken one hour 57 minutes to do a batch of 204 transcriptions. Yesterday one batch took one hour 53 minutes, another almost two and a half hours! The main reason for this was because well over 50% of the transcriptions were from non-English speaking people and it took as many as ten plays on some audios to interpret properly. And they haven't been QC checked yet, there is every chance I will have to go through them again to correct what they say are errors, so that's bringing the hourly rate down even further!!!!

I emailed my supervisor this morning asking if it is realistic to do 200 tasks in an hour , this is what he replied:

Hey Barry,

Many of transcribers are able to complete 1 task an hour, some are even able to complete 1 task with 40-50mins.

As you are new to the transcription software it may take some time to get use to the software.

Regards,

Chi Ming Man

So going by his fastest estimate that's an average of one transcription completed every 12 seconds, so listen to it, interpret it, type it and add tags!! Distinct whiff of cow manure methinks! (Can I say that BTW?! sorry if not)

And again this contract is meant to be for the UK market, I would expect maybe 10 to 15% to be from people with "non-English" accents in line with ethnic mix in our country (which I am proud we have such diversity), but to have in excess of 50% of audios with people with obviously non-English accents is far away from how the work was described.

I am going to stop doing it, I was hoping this might lead to a regular form of income, but not it the hourly rate is goint to be about £4 per hour.

So sorry to have gone on so much, but I am pretty angry about this and thought I would share with you guys so you can hopefully avoid getting sucked in too.

Have you done a transcription job before? Got to remember that it does involve skill after all, so practice will improve speed. Doubling your rate is possible if that's your first try, though it might sound a lot. Very rarely will a job like this be so easy that you are at optimum throughput and earning a good hourly rate straight off the bat (even 4-5£/hour for a beginner isn't bad at all compared to some of the crowdsourced transcription sites)

bobbyf

I've just started the isoftstone transcription gig. I've done fairly well so far and it hasn't taken me too long - £9.50 an hour sounds very optimistic but I'm confident I can make, say, £7.00 ph as long as there aren't too many corrections to be made. Some of the tagging does seem very subjective!

Anyway, my question is - how do we invoice them? Can I just send an invoice I've created, or is there a particular format they ask us to use? Other similar jobs I've done have had an online form or tracker of some kind but I can't find one on isoftstone. Anyone got any ideas?

BuzzyBee77

Just done one batch so far, and feedback was mainly I overused the BackgroundAll tag so have to do it over again. Kind of sorry I agreed to the project now as I can only really do Sundays and doubt I will earn much at all from this.

BuzzyBee77

I feel I am going to give up on this now was asked to redo my assigned first task of 200 and now informed that it was not corrected properly. It seems easy but they want it done in a very certain way. Pay seems very low as well.