How Transcribing Sermons Helps Increase Content Retention

Have You Tried Transcribing Sermons Yet?

Scripture:

• Nehemiah 8:12 All the people went to eat to drink, to send portions and to celebrate a great festival because they understood the words that had been declared to them.

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Do you have some friends who are deaf or learning English and you wish the sermon captioning wasn't an autogenerated mishmash, so they could understand what was being said too? Or do you wish you could recall the content of that sermon you just heard? Did you miss some salient points? Or do you want to catch a sermon late at night when everyone is sleeping? Many people realize the importance of video transcription for SEO, but the benefits of video transcription for the transcriber can be huge too!

If you have been thinking of trying your hand at video transcription or creating close-captioning, then these tips just might be helpful for you too.

Then you might want to try transcribing YouTube sermons.

While I am definitely not an expert at transcribing sermons, this post may have a few tips that could help you get started in transcribing sermons posted on YouTube.

You may also be interested in:

• More Bible Study Tool Posts.

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Transcription Tips for Transcribing YouTube Sermons

A Sunday School teacher posted a free webinar where she shared the importance of starting agencies online through Fiverr and other platforms to employ people in impoverished countries and give them a hand up. One type of agency she suggested was YouTube transcription services. In her webinar, it looked easy peasy - just click, click-click and you're done!

I soon discovered that things do not go quite that quickly. After stumbling through transcribing a couple of sermons, I soon discovered some added benefits to sermon transcription - when I transcribe a YouTube sermon I understand and recall the content much better!

Are you thinking of trying your hand at sermon transcription? Here are a few tips I've gleaned through my meagre experience and from around the web.

How To Start Transcribing YouTube Sermons

1. Transcription Tip One: Choose the Right Content to Transcribe. I recommend choosing a short sermon with an auto-generated transcript that you really enjoy on YouTube. This is vital. Always start a small task and something you enjoy. Just as you wouldn't recommend someone start learning to read with a hefty volume on a topic they abhor, the same holds true for learning any new task. Starting with something short that you enjoy will help you maintain enthusiasm while you are beginning so you will stick with it. Why choose a sermon? Transcribing a sermon is much easier than transcribing content that has multiple speakers. Why choose a short sermon that has an autogenerated transcription on YouTube? This leads us to our next tip.
2. Transcription Tip Two: Cut Transcription Time Using Free YouTube Tools. YouTube offers creators the option to generate a transcription automatically. Some people may think that the autogenerated transcript is good enough, but oh my! The errors you find in an autogenerated transcript are sometimes hilarious and at others nefarious! By choosing a short sermon on YouTube with an autogenerated transcript, half the transcription job is done for you already. What you are basically doing is editing the transcript. Here's how to use the free tools provided in YouTube to access the autogenerated transcript for the sermon you are transcribing. In this video, I did not toggle the time stamps off before copying the autogenerated transcription. Why? When I first started transcribing, I found the time stamps helped me keep track of where I was in the video when I first started transcribing sermons.  See the bottom of this post for a tip on how to remove time stamps quickly in Google Docs.
   
3. Transcription Tip Three: Take Advantage Free Online Editing Tools. Paste your transcript into a Google Doc to edit it. I have edited transcripts using Google Docs and using Microsoft Word and both have their advantages. One area where Google Docs surpasses a Word Document is in the insertion of special characters. True, you can insert musical notes in a Word document, using "Webdings", however, when you paste it into the YouTube transcription your lovely Webdings turn into ugly "x-ed" out rectangles. Here is a video showing how to start editing the autogenerated video transcript with Google Docs.
   
4. Transcription Tip Four: Cut Transcription Time By Turning Off Overly Helpful Tools. One thing I found that took a lot of my time was repairing autocorrected items that did not require autocorrecting. For example, the autocorrect in Microsoft Word kept changing the first letter in each line to an uppercase letter. Aaaaargh! Turn off the autocorrect! 
5. Transcription Tip Five: Cut Transcription Time By Using Find - Replace. Due to my concussion, I had forgotten all about this very handy shortcut that I had used for years when University writing papers. By using Find-Replace you can quickly find all the instances of proper names that are spelled "paul" and replace them with "Paul" for example. Believe me, this will save you a tonne of time.
6. Transcription Tip Six: Cut Transcription Time By Saving Frequently with Autosave. There is nothing more frustrating than completing a chunk of transcription and losing it because your battery conks out. Turning on Autosave can be a big help especially if you tend to get absorbed in a task. However, try not to rely too heavily on Autosave. You might want to set a timer to remind you to save your work and get up and take a break every ten minutes or so. This can also cut down on eyestrain and may even help you transcribe more quickly.
7. Transcription Tip Seven: Cut Transcription Time By Using Highlighting.  By highlighting sections to doublecheck later as I went along, I found it saved me a tonne of time. In addition, highlighting where I left off when I stopped for a break made it easy to pick up where I left off
8. .Transcription Tip Eight: Cut Transcription Time By Using "Regular Expression" to Remove Time Stamps When you finish editing your closed captioning in Google Docs, use the "Find-Replace" command to quickly find all the timestamps in your document and delete them. Tick the "Modify using regular expressions" box and put the following expression in the Find box without the quotes -"[0-9].:.." or in words: open Square bracket zero hyphen nine closed square bracket period colon period period.

   

   Removing Timestamps Using Find -Replace with a Regular Expression

   
   This expression tells the computer to search for numerical expressions starting with any number between zero and nine followed by any character, a colon, and any other two characters and will work for sermons up to 59.99 minutes in length. Have a longer sermon? You'll need to add an extra period before the colon and do a second search.

Do you have an interesting sermon you would like close-captioned? Please post a note in the comments below.

Sources:

• Nehemiah 8:12 Scripture Translation - Blue Letter Bible

About This Author

Sister Su is grateful to God for keeping her alive. She is a Trent/Queen's Concurrent Education graduate with over 20 years of teaching experience. She writes on several blogs, has a YouTube channel and is most easily reached through Twitter @Sister_Su See her link tree for more details:@Sister_Su | Linktree

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