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

The rise of AI-infused listening and transcription apps is driving a societal shift toward recording everyday interactions without asking permission.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026

Automated transcription services are proliferating—and rapidly improving in accuracy.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 13, 2026

To identify factors that limit CAR T-cell performance, the researchers conducted a large-scale analysis of roughly 400 transcription factors, proteins that control which genes are switched on or off inside cells.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 2, 2026

‘The practise of transcription in our dayes was no monster in theirs: Plagiarie had not its nativitie with printing,’ he concluded, ‘but began in times when thefts were difficult’ because books were in short supply.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Health obsessives often monitor workouts, step counts, sleep metrics, heart rates and nutrition data, cross-referencing the information with their calendars, meeting transcriptions, emails and clinical records.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 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

They include police and judicial reports, transcriptions of conversations between officials, and the reactions of foreign governments to the events.

From BBC ● Feb. 25, 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

Unfortunately, the programs we have at present are too often transcriptions onto television monitors of unimaginative lists of routine exercises taken from the textbooks.

From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos

Related Words

• breeding
• copy
• facsimile
• imitation
• photocopy
• photograph
• picture
• print
• propagation
• recreation
• replica
• replication