How to transcribe an interview

To transcribe an interview, record it or take the recording you already have, turn the speech into text, then separate the interviewer’s questions from the answers and check every quote you plan to use. Doing it by hand means typing along with the audio; software does the first pass, and the checking stays with you. Dalm, a Mac app, records the interview on a call or in a room, recognises the speech on your Mac and tells the voices apart there; no audio is sent anywhere, and the transcript is synced to our servers automatically. There is a Free plan.

Before you start: two voices, and where each one comes from

An interview transcript is only useful if the questions and the answers are kept apart, so it is worth knowing where each voice will come from before you press record. On a call, your voice goes in through your microphone and the other person’s comes out of your speakers. In a room, both voices reach one microphone. And if the interview is already recorded, the file is all there is. Whichever it is, put the microphone closer to the person than to the room, and choose a place without a second conversation in it: a clean recording helps more than any setting. Before you start, tell the person you are recording.

An interview on a call

When Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack or FaceTime starts using the microphone, Dalm offers to record with a notification, and ⌃⌥M starts a recording at any time. It takes two streams: your microphone, and the sound of the call. That is why, on a call, your questions come out as yours without any guessing, and the other voice is taken from the call’s sound. If the call is running but nothing arrives from the other side, the screen says “the other side is not heard” while you can still fix it. Notes you type while you listen keep the time they were written, and ⌥M sets a mark when an answer is worth coming back to.

An interview in the same room

In a room there is only the microphone, so both voices are told apart on your Mac, and the app asks which one is you — “That’s me”. The transcript made from them is synced to our servers like any other. A phone call on speaker, with the phone on the table, is recorded the same way. If the interview is a phone call you want to record on the phone itself, recording a phone call is a guide of its own. Research interviews in a lab or a café work the same as any conversation in a room: the closer the microphone is to the person, the fewer words go missing. What changes when a whole study runs on interviews is on transcription for qualitative research.

An interview you have already recorded

If the interview is already on a recorder, a phone or in a video, bring the file in. Dalm takes an audio or video file from 0.3 seconds to four hours long, and you choose whether it is a Dictation or a Meeting (several voices). The file is read where it lies — “The file is processed on this Mac · the original stays where it was” — so the original recording is still yours to keep and to play in any player; the transcript made from it is synced to our servers like any other. This works on the Free plan. Why a file may not be something to upload in the first place, and the other ways to turn it into text, are in the guide to transcribing an audio file; for an interview on video, see transcribing a video.

Checking the transcript: names, terms and quotes

Every line of the transcript has its time and a voice. Naming the voices is optional: until you do, a voice shows the app’s guess or a number, and in the naming step a guess may be marked “Suggested by Dalm — check before you agree.” In the transcript and the summary a guess looks like any other name until you confirm or change it. If one person was split into two voices, merge them; a voice is not recognised from one meeting to the next, so each interview starts with new voices. Any line can be edited, and the original stays one click away. Names and terms that come out wrong go into the dictionary with what was heard instead, and ⌘F finds a word anywhere in the transcript.

In the meeting summary, each point keeps a word-for-word quote. Every quote shows you where it was said — open it and the transcript opens at that place. What you cannot do is listen to that place: the audio is deleted once the text exists. If a quote has to be checked by ear, check it against a recording you keep yourself — a file you brought in stays where it was. How the voices are told apart has a page of its own.

Where the interview audio and the text go

The speech is recognised on your Mac, and the two voices are told apart there too. No audio is sent anywhere, to us or to a language model. The text goes the other way: the transcript, line by line with its times and voice numbers, is synced to our servers automatically, and no setting turns the sync off. A language model then reads that text to write the summary. If what the person said cannot leave your computer even as text, this is not the right tool for that interview, and we would rather say so. What goes where, piece by piece, is on privacy.

What an interview transcript looks like

A usable interview transcript starts with a short header: who was interviewed, by whom, when, and on which call or in which place. Then every line says who is speaking and when. Some projects need every “um” and false start kept; others want the words cleaned up for reading — verbatim transcription sets out the difference. The header is yours to add at the top of the text. If the person you interviewed wants to read it and has the Dalm app on a Mac, you can invite them by email to that one meeting: they sign in with the address you invited and can read it, not change it. Anyone else gets the saved file.

Telling the person you are recording

Say at the start that you are recording, and ask. Dalm does not join the call and does not tell anyone that it is recording: that is up to you, and the app reminds you of it before your first meeting. What the rules are depends on where you and the other person are; the rules on recording consent are set out on a page of their own. The same goes for what you have promised the person about the recording and the transcript: keep to it.

What the Free plan covers for an interview

Recording an interview with its transcript and summary, and transcribing a file you bring in, come with the Free plan, and Free is a plan rather than a trial. Dalm needs a Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later and an account; while it is not public, the way in is the waitlist. What the paid plans add is on the pricing page.