Delivering an Effective Presentation (From a Transcriber’s Point of View) -2/2

(Topic continuing from the previous post)

3.  Access to Video Recording:  Nowadays, many of the speeches at high level meetings, conferences, and forums are covered by video recordings, generally for archiving purposes.  Such recordings are of tremendous help to the transcribers because it helps in speaker identification, helps resolve confusion on slide identification if the video contains slide footage, and to a lesser extent, helps in identifying many words merely through speakers’ body language and gestures.  However, this is only true when the video is of good quality and it has been supplemented with PDF or PPT references.

One issue that transcribers sometimes face with the video footage is that many times, the video shots of PDF and PPT are sent as references.  This should be avoided as much as possible because such video footage, due to light reflection, uneven focusing, and wrong handling of the camera are of far lesser quality than the actual PPT or PDF document.  The words written in the PPT slides then cannot be clearly deciphered leading to ambiguous interpretation on the part of the transcribers.

4.  Accent and Spoken English Quality:  The main element that the transcriber needs to produce a good quality transcript, and in many instances maybe the only one, is the voice file.  Hence, even if the reference quality is not good, it can be made up by a voice file which is clearly audible, less accented, and without distortion.  To deliver his message correctly to the audience, the speaker should speak in clear and correct English, keeping a moderate pace.  The correct speech pace becomes even more significant for South Asian speakers as they generally have heavily accented voice and sometimes use faulty English sentences, which can lead to wrong interpretations.

5.  Proper Placement of Recording Equipment:  Generally, the recording equipment used in seminars and conferences is of high quality, but the placement can be faulty.  The microphones are wrongly placed as a result of which they pick up side conversations, ruffling of papers on the dais, and noise from other electronic equipment placed close to the microphone resulting in distortion of the main speech.  Hence, care should be taken that the microphone be placed at a proper place and proper distance to catch the speaker’s speech only and not any other sounds.  In this regard, it is important to note that the reverberation quality of the hall should be checked beforehand; otherwise, the recorded speech will have echo effects making the speech difficult to listen to.  If PPTs are being video recorded, the camera should be placed where reflection of lights on the PPT slides is minimum and the words are recognizable.

Keeping in mind the above points while delivering a structured speech such as a presentation or lecture will not only help in making the presentation lively and effective for the audience, but will also help the transcriber deliver a superior quality transcript which ultimately will lead to a satisfied client.