transcription

American  

[tran-skrip-shuhn] / trænˈskrɪp ʃən /

noun

• transcriptions
  plural

1. the act or process of transcribing.

2. something transcribed.

3. a transcript; copy.

4. Music.

   1. the arrangement of a composition for a medium other than that for which it was originally written.

   2. a composition so arranged.

5. Radio and Television. a recording made especially for broadcasting.

6. Genetics. the process by which genetic information on a strand of DNA is used to synthesize a strand of complementary RNA.

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transcription British  

/ trænˈskrɪpʃən /

noun

1. the act or an instance of transcribing or the state of being transcribed

2. something transcribed

3. a representation in writing of the actual pronunciation of a speech sound, word, or piece of continuous text, using not a conventional orthography but a symbol or set of symbols specially designated as standing for corresponding phonetic values

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transcription Scientific  

/ trăn-skrĭp′shən /

1. The process in a cell by which genetic material is copied from a strand of DNA to a complementary strand of RNA (called messenger RNA). In eukaryotes, transcription takes place in the nucleus before messenger RNA is transported to the ribosomes for protein synthesis.

2. Compare translation

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• mistranscription
  noun
• nontranscription
  noun
• pretranscription
  noun
• retranscription
  noun
• transscriptionist
  noun
• nontranscriptive
  adjective
• transcriptional
  adjective
• transcriptive
  adjective
• transcriptionally
  adverb
• transcriptively
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• transcriptions
  plural

Etymology

Origin of transcription

First recorded in 1590–1600, transcription is from the Latin word trānscrīptiōn- (stem of trānscrīptiō ). See transcript, -ion

Explanation

A transcription is the document made by copying down in writing something that you listen to, like audio tapes, an interview, or comments made during a meeting. If you watch TV crime dramas, you’ve probably seen someone take a transcription while cops interview a suspect — that person is writing down all the things that are said. Transcription can also refer to the process of transcribing. If you’re a musician, you probably know that transcription can also describe adapting a piece of music for different instruments, like a cello transcription of a Beatles song.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

transcription transcriptions

The paper, "Dose-dependent sensitivity of human three-dimensional chromatin to a heart disease-linked transcription factor," was published in the journal Science on July 23, 2026.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 13, 2026

Plus, China’s latest AI advances, always-on transcription and the perils of big AI contracts.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026

That level of presence is possible now—and wasn’t in the past—because she knows her AI transcription and note-taking tool is capturing every nuance of the interaction, and her insurance-filing tool will digest it into claims.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 21, 2026

I sometimes use the transcription platform Rev, which offers an A.I. transcript you can scrub through along with the audio.

From Slate ● May 24, 2026

There’s a note in the transcription that John didn’t hesitate when he said that.

From "Adrift" by Paul Griffin

In general, laws don’t distinguish between recordings and transcriptions.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026

A congressional panel investigating late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has released transcriptions of interviews with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Ted Waitt, the billionaire co-founder of Gateway computers.

From BBC ● May 14, 2026

This week, while releasing new AI models for internal uses, such as transcriptions, he described them External link to the Financial Times as “mid-class” and not in competition with the best frontier models.

From Barron's ● Apr. 4, 2026

But even if Apple is offering this product for free, it’ll make back money in another way: With all of these local recordings and transcriptions, my monthly iCloud bill is absolutely bound to go up.

From Slate ● Oct. 31, 2024

For a considerable period in Latin transcriptions there were no gaps between words either, if you can credit such madness.

From "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Author

Related Words

• breeding
• copy
• facsimile
• imitation
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