transcribe

verb

tran·​scribe tran(t)-ˈskrīb 

transcribed; transcribing

transitive verb

1

a

: to make a written copy of

b

: to make a copy of (dictated or recorded matter) in longhand or on a machine (such as a typewriter)

c

: to paraphrase or summarize in writing

d

: write down, record

2

a

: to represent (speech sounds) by means of phonetic symbols

b

: translate sense 1a

c

: to transfer (data) from one recording form to another

d

: to record (as on magnetic tape) for later broadcast

3

: to make a musical transcription of

4

: to cause (DNA or RNA) to undergo genetic transcription

transcriber noun

Examples of transcribe in a Sentence

He transcribed all of his great-grandfather's letters.

The senator's speech was transcribed.

a Mozart string quartet transcribed for piano

a system that allows linguists to transcribe the sounds of any language

Recent Examples on the Web

Those will transcribe calls and provide feedback in order to detect whether a customer’s issue was resolved. —Francisco Velasquez, Quartz, 12 Apr. 2024

When their audio does get transcribed into text, will the AI tool be fairly examining them? —Abc News, ABC News, 8 Apr. 2024

Ultimately, an OpenAI team transcribed more than one million hours of YouTube videos, the people said. —Nico Grant, New York Times, 6 Apr. 2024

According to The New York Times, OpenAI transcribed over a million hours of YouTube videos using its Whisper speech recognition tool and then used those transcriptions to help train GPT-4 despite discussions that doing so might be against YouTube’s terms of service. —Emily Price, PCMAG, 6 Apr. 2024

Though many Indigenous languages are primarily oral, Portuguese colonizers transcribed them using the Latin alphabet in the 16th century. —Cameron Pugh, The Christian Science Monitor, 21 Mar. 2024

Riley has some checks in place to make sure that the audio transcribed by the AI is accurate and that facial recognition is identifying the correct employee in an interaction (the company says its accuracy on these points is between 96% and 99%). —Rashi Shrivastava, Forbes, 23 Feb. 2024

Cyril and Methodius, brothers who are credited with devising the Glagolitic alphabet to transcribe scripture. —Karen Garcia, Los Angeles Times, 14 Feb. 2024

Their anonymous responses were transcribed and sent back to me. —Ian Urbina, The New Yorker, 6 Feb. 2024

Word History

Etymology

Latin transcribere, from trans- + scribere to write — more at scribe

First Known Use

1552, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

Kids Definition

transcribe

verb

tran·​scribe tran(t)s-ˈkrīb 

transcribed; transcribing

1

a

: to make a written copy of

b

: to make a copy of (dictated or recorded matter) by hand or on a machine (as a typewriter)

2

: to represent speech sounds with phonetic symbols

transcriber noun

Medical Definition

transcribe

transitive verb

tran·​scribe tran(t)s-ˈkrīb 

transcribed; transcribing

: to cause (as DNA) to undergo genetic transcription