I did my first transcription work this week. Not sure I am best suited for this line of work. By the end of it, I was literally screaming at my laptop... (admittedly that is not particularly unusual).
The ahems and ahs were annoying and much worse when the text was dictated in English (understandably). There were a number of words I couldn't decipher even after various repeats. And in English, he kept using certain expressions which hurt my ears. He for example loves to say 'on the one hand'. But instead of following it with 'on the other hand', it is followed by secondly and thirdly. Meaning he confuses 'on the one hand' with 'firstly'. Also a repetitive pattern was the wrong use of the word 'could' - false friends with the German word 'koennte', and it should have mostly been translated with 'was able to'.
And don't get me wrong: I fully appreciate that people make mistakes and on the whole, I was actually very impressed with the level of English. (And yes, I have now pointed the above out to him - so it's not that I am just moaning ;-))
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