Biggest Challenges Faced in Arabic Transcription

The various dialects of the Arabic language is spoken by nearly 422 million speakers in and around the Arab nations. It is one among the five most spoken languages in the world. The Arabic language spoken in various countries is different from classical Arabic, the mother of the language. Over the centuries, each region has added its own vocabulary to it, giving a unique identity to the language.

People speaking different dialects of Arabic may not find it simple to communicate with each other, as the language has evolved differently in their respective countries. This has made the transcriber’s jobs challenging and interesting, as they are expected to learn the cultural differences and dialect variations.

Modern Standardized Arabic Language:

The most common way around this is by transcribing the dialect into the Modern Standardized Arabic (MSA) Language equivalent. The MSA Language is used in every media outlet such as television, radio broadcast, newspapers, books, etc. It is a standardized written format that is followed throughout the Arabic speaking nations, as the script is similar to the classical Arabic, present in the Quran.

Though MSA is useful for academics, formal documents and religious literature, it still varies from the local dialects spoken. MSA is not spoken in any of the Arabic speaking countries. This has led to variations in the written form and the spoken dialect. Hence speech recognition of Arabic language is a great challenge and requires the need of expert transcribers who can converse and understand most of the dialects.

Need for Arabic Transcription:

When an Arab goes from one country to another, he is going to learn to talk in the local dialect than the MSA. This has resulted in data acquired for business, legal and research purposes, being recorded in various local dialects. Business must make use of Arabic transcription services to transcribe the recorded audio into the MSA written text, as it may sound foreign to those who are not familiar with different dialects.

Many of the basic words are completely different in the local dialects when compared to the MSA. If words are written similarly, pronunciation may differ. This can confuse anyone listening to the audio on the first go. It takes an expert to distinguish words and transcribe them into proper text. The MSA script does not accurately describe some of the spoken Arabic dialects because it lacks vowels. Arabic transcription can only be done by a transcriber who knows the local languages well and has had years of experience.

Disadvantages of Online Machine Transcription software:

There are a lot of online machine transcription software, that can be downloaded for free and used for Arabic Transcription. Hence the transcribed content that machine generates is going to be relatively inferior compared to native human transcribers who are more familiar with the dialects. It is better to avoid such programs and go for an Arabic transcription service which will provide superior quality transcription at an affordable price.

Though an Arabic transcriber spends hours of his time on transcribing content, the work he reaps will definitely be of rich quality. Scripts Complete makes use of native transcribers who thoroughly know various Arabic dialects to transcribe Arabic audio to text. You can contact our Arabic transcription services and we can help you if you need to transcribe data regarding interviews with focus groups, legal purposes, police investigations, etc. We provide 100% accurate, good quality transcription with a quick turnaround time at a reasonable price.

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