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The rate of audio transcription employment has been relatively high over the past few years and there some good reasons for that. The job of the audio transcriptionist is to make word transcripts of audio cassette tapes, digital sound files, dictations and speeches. Some of you might ask who are the people or companies that need audio transcription services. Well, a lot of universities require transcribes of research interviews, lectures, lawyers, court houses, organizers of conferences.

Court reporting is a form of audio transcription employment that is going through a serious shortage of job candidates. According to wikipedia.org, a court reporter is a person whose occupation is to transcribe spoken or recorded speech into written form, typically using stenography equipment to produce official transcripts of court hearings, depositions and other official proceedings. In order to keep up with the flow of speech, court reporters use a stenomask or a shorthand system such as stenotype. Court reporter oaths that his or her transcript of the proceedings is a verbatim account of what was said. Currently there is a huge shortage for court reporters.

Nationwide, the number of court reporting schools accredited by the National Court Reporting Association fell to 80 today from 114 in 1995, according to the association, because of rapidly declining enrollment in those programs. Not everyone can become a court reporter, it takes special skill set, and a lot of people don want to invest time in court report training. Required qualities of a court reporter are excellent command of the language being spoken, attention to detail and the ability to focus for long periods at a time. The California state exam requires students to type 200 words per minute with 97.5 percent accuracy. Alternative technologies to replace court reporters, such as voice recognition recording and the placement of audio tape recorders in the courtroom, are limited and their transcriptions not nearly as accurate as those of a court reporter.7

Filling an audio transcription employment position requires a commitment of time, effort and money. You typically have to start an audio transcription training. You start usually at a reporting school. The NCRA maintains a list of approved schools conducting court reporter training, which can be found here ( http://www.ncraonline.org/education/schools/index.shtml ). The court reporter training and practice takes most people several years. Distance learning and online training courses are also available.

The job outlook in the field of audio transcription employment is quite good. Job opportunities for audio transcriptionists are expected to be excellent as job openings continue to outnumber jobseekers. Audio transcriptionist with certification should have the best job opportunities. In 2005, the average annual earnings of a court reporter were about 45,000$.

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