Tractors!

One of the projects McGowan Transcription services were recently involved in was transcribing interviews on agriculture machinery. Anyone deluded enough to think that such a project would be plain sailing, think again. Of course we have all heard of Massey Ferguson and John Deere; how difficult could it be?

It soon became apparent that the transcription team had been thrown deep into, er, unploughed territory. Not only are there innumerable makes and models on the market but many interviews were conducted in the depths of the countryside. Here, regional accents seem broader, and together with the minefield of technical language and jargon, this made for challenging transcribing. Team work became the order of the day as each member of the team involved in the project shared their particular Eureka moment when thorough internet research added yet another make or model to our cache of tractor terms.

By midday, on day one, shared knowledge was fast filling the body of an email. By day two, terms, terminology, makes and models had exceeded the polite bounds of an email. They now formed part of a Word document attachment, several pages long and still, they grew. In the end, we had an alphabetic list which would, I have no doubt, have put Farmer’s Weekly to shame had they tried to come up with their own definitive version of what is available in the market place today in the world of agriculture.

It is this meticulous attention to detail and the desire on the part of the transcription team, to research and record exactly what is meant by the respondent, not a close approximation of what may have been heard, that I believe sets McGowan Transcription services apart from the rest. It is our willingness to recognise and support each individual’s contribution to the team and its efficiency that means that collectively we uphold the quality of transcript that is delivered by McGowan Transcriptions time and time again. Of course, I long for my spot on Who Wants to be a Millionaire to put my arsenal of miscellaneous knowledge to the test and for my answer on flail mowers to be all that stands between me and a million but, well, I can but dream…

Written by Laurian Kerr
Research Transcriber