How you should write ‘lockdown’ etc, funding withdrawal issues, nice testimonials, in house transcription and refer a friend. All in all another busy week at TP Transcription headquarters. We have a lot of projects ongoing at the moment in both English-English speech to text work but also increasing numbers of other language transcription orders.
Covid Extensions – Pre-Ordering Transcription & Translation Work
We have received a number of enquiries asking about pre-ordering transcription and translation work in order to spend academic research budgets in time. This is something we have been offering for many years and it is simple to use. Place your order, raise a purchase order with your university and we will take care of it for you, holding your funds in credit until they are needed. A number of clients are reporting that their universities are allowing them covid extensions, which may remove the need to pre-order work. If you need any assistance with pre-ordering or raising a purchase order with your academic institution please get in touch with our MD, Anna Gresty.
You Say Potato – Covid-19 Spellings
Clients have been asking this week – how should we spell “lockdown”, “homeworking” and “Covid-19”?
Here is our definitive guide (I say definitive because this is what we have decided to use!):
- Lockdown or lock down? We use “lockdown”
- Home working or homeworking? We use “homeworking”
- COVID-19 or Covid-19? We use “Covid-19”
Lets call the whole thing off…
Refer a Friend and Receive a John Lewis Voucher
A new initiative to say thank you to all those who refer friends and colleagues to us. If you are an existing client or have placed an order with us before and you refer a friend or colleague who requests a quote and uploads audio, we will send you a John Lewis voucher to say thank you! Just ask your friend to click the “recommended by a friend” when filling out the formal quote request and let us know who you are when they upload and we will do the rest.
Feedback from a PhD Student at the University of Leicester
We received a nice email from a student we helped a little while ago when he was in need of urgent assistance with his PhD.
Hi Anna
Fortunately the transcripts that your team did for me were the last 8 for my PhD. I am now at writing-up stage, thank God, but your team really rescued me and helped me to get back on schedule when I was falling behind. I am grateful for that, and wish you the very best during these challenging times and for the future. I appreciated the speed at which the work was done and the very professional way that you managed the process. rest assured, if anyone I know needs transcription support, I will recommend you to them.
All the best.
Funding Withdrawn – a Covid-19 Issue?
Email from a researcher:
Frustratingly, I was granted provision for transcription, before all internal funding was cut and the money was withdrawn, and a second grant was unfortunately unsuccessful.
So far our experience of academic research funding being withdrawn has been slight. We have not come across large scale funding cuts in the long term or short term projects we work on, although it sounds from the above that the university funding this researcher has made a decision to cut all internal funding. Quite a lot of the work we do has external funding sources rather than from the academic institution. Various studies have been put on hold until researchers are able to conduct face to face interviews again, but a large number have moved over to Microsoft Team and Zoom to continue.
It would be interesting to hear of any funding issues and we would welcome feedback from anyone experiencing problems with funding that has been offered but subsequently withdrawn.
In House Transcription
“Dear Anna – due to Covid-19 and the lockdown timescale it was decided that our transcription should be undertaken in-house. Thank you very much for your email but we no longer require transcription services.”
This was an email received from a government institution this week. We have been informed of this before by government and university departments, but our experience is that usually a decision has been made by someone in senior management who has absolutely no idea how long it takes to complete transcription work. When the junior staff get wind of the fact they are going to be expected to sit for hours on end transcribing research reports as well as completing their usual daily tasks, we will get a call back again from the department asking if we can still assist. Our bet is that this potential client will be back in touch by Christmas..
Senior management very often fail to realise how long it takes to undertake accurate transcription work and just how time consuming it can be to finish the work in house. Not only that, but we have seen organisations actually recruit transcribers to work on a full or part time basis on transcription, without realising that research and academic transcription can be very sporadic. Some weeks there may be no work at all and others may involve many hours of transcription. It only takes a few weeks annual leave or sickness and all of a sudden the work backs up and the department is left with serious issues.
It can be a lot easier just to send your work over to us…
