Transcribing is the act of writing down or copying on to text form your audio field recordings for archiving and analyzing. There are various methods and conventions for transcribing recorded audio material. The decision to use a particular method depends of the purpose of the text, among other things.
Why transcribe?
Transcribing helps us to listen more carefully to what we have recorded and to what people are saying. Having an interview on paper helps you better analyze the content in order to better tell the story you want to tell. It also helps you choosing segments of the interview you would like to use for your story as many times one doesn’t used an entire audio recording. Finally, having a text from your audio recording will help you for archiving the material.
Methods
The simplest and easiest method is to play the audio recorder, and type at the same time you are listening to the recording. You may be able to only do small pieces at a time, and this may take some time, but it is worth the investment. You should transcribe everything you hear or word for word.
If you have access to transcribing tools these may help you save some time. Still transcribing is important, but it is time-consuming.