Doubtless, in our digitalized era, more and more content is created and consumed online. As of January 2023, almost 59% of websites used the English language for their content. It is followed by the Russian language, with 5.3%. With around 258 million speakers worldwide, Russian is the eighth most widely spoken language in the world. On top of that, the Russian-speaking Internet audience is growing fast.
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This large number of people creates a demand for Russian content on the internet. Also, because much content in this language is produced, there’s a need to understand it for English-speakers. That is especially true now when the current war initiated by the Russian Federation is continuing to shape global politics and economy.
Since audio and video are definitely very popular content formats nowadays, the need for translation and transcription services grows. Then the question emerges: whether to choose a professional linguist’s help or rely on automated tools? Let’s break down the pros and cons.
Transcribing Russian content makes it accessible to a wider audience who prefer reading or require subtitles. This includes those with hearing impairments or those who simply prefer to consume information textually.
So, how to understand what an audio in Russian says? Well, that mostly depends on your current level of Russian.
How to Translate Russian Audio If You Don’t Know The Language
In case you do not speak the language and understand speakers in life, you can’t transcribe and translate the Russian audio content yourself. So, you can use a tool or a human translator. Here are some possible options.
1. YouTube Subtitles
Upload the recording as a video to YouTube and then play with automatic close captions enabled. That may be deceptive though. YouTube has automatic subtitling based on speech recognition too, but it works imperfectly even for English. It means that automatic translation from Russian into English isn’t reliable at all.
2. Search Engines Voice Input
You can also try Yandex or Google voice input functions for written and oral translation. Presumably, Yandex works better for Russian compared to Google, because the speech-to-text algorithms were trained in the Russian language, obviously. Remember, machine voice translation is nonetheless a huge challenge. It can be a way to go if you don’t need to pay too much attention to the fine details of what’s being said. However, automated Russian audio and video transcription is not really an option for those looking for accuracy.
3. Specialized Automated Tools
Use a special online tool or an app for Russian transcription and translation services. They can be freely available (to some extent) or paywalled. Most of them are comparatively cheap and claim highly accurate outputs. However, as for translating as you speak, this will simply never become possible. That is especially true for Russians because they don’t have a strict word order in the sentence. They tend to start with the common ground and move on to the new information. So you need to hear it before you can parse the entire sentence and render it in English. It’s often a pure “stream of consciousness” and sometimes even a human translator struggles to parse it.
And even if you had the patience to wait for the translation, you would quickly realize that much human speech is full of filler words, pauses and retractions. Besides, half-spoken words, interrupted thoughts and outright errors often occur. You can hardly even write it down and have it make sense. It means that any software can handle the content which is challenging even for professionals to render.
Moreover, remember we are talking about a good-quality recording. But imagine you are dealing with, for example, a social media video from a crowded place with loud street noise or wind blowing. In such conditions, you may struggle to distinguish the words in your native language. Then what translation results can we expect to get from a tool?
4. Professional Russian Translator
For those looking for accuracy in speech-to-text conversion hiring a professional native Russian transcriber and translator is doubtlessly the right choice. In addition, it doesn’t necessarily mean great expenses. Some companies charge as low as $.09 per minute of audio for transcription and $5 p/min for translation services. This means you can get a human-generated transcription and/or translation revised by an expert editor and not empty your pocket!
Transcribing Audio If You Know Russian at Some Level
Having a decent level of Russian you can transcribe a speech and write it down. Of course, you won’t be able to do this unless you can actually understand what they are saying. That’s not that easy to do at all. First, you need a very good ear. Second, you have to slow it down big time. Third, it is needed to rewind it about 100 times.
So, even if you know Russian at some level, you will end up finding a native-speaking professional to get a quality transcript or translation.
Conclusions
The demand for Russian audio transcription and translation services is on the rise. Advancements in speech recognition and machine translation technologies are improving the efficiency of these services. Currently existing speech-to-word software is becoming more accessible and affordable. Indeed, tools provide a viable solution for projects that have tight deadlines and limited budgets. But for those requiring precise transcripts and accurate translations hiring a skilled professional is really the best choice.
