Abstract: A semi-automatic speech transcription system of the invention leverages the complementary capabilities of human and machine, building a system which combines automatic and manual approaches. With the invention, collected audio data is automatically distilled into speech segments, using signal processing and pattern recognition algorithms. The detected speech segments are presented to a human transcriber using a transcription tool with a streamlined transcription interface, requiring the transcriber to simply “listen and type”. This eliminates the need to manually navigate the audio, coupling the human effort to the amount of speech, rather than the amount of audio. Errors produced by the automatic system can be quickly identified by the human transcriber, which are used to improve the automatic system performance. The automatic system is tuned to maximize the human transcriber efficiency.

Abstract: A semi-automatic speech transcription system of the invention leverages the complementary capabilities of human and machine, building a system which combines automatic and manual approaches. With the invention, collected audio data is automatically distilled into speech segments, using signal processing and pattern recognition algorithms. The detected speech segments are presented to a human transcriber using a transcription tool with a streamlined transcription interface, requiring the transcriber to simply “listen and type”. This eliminates the need to manually navigate the audio, coupling the human effort to the amount of speech, rather than the amount of audio. Errors produced by the automatic system can be quickly identified by the human transcriber, which are used to improve the automatic system performance. The automatic system is tuned to maximize the human transcriber efficiency.