# Interview transcription: method, template and GDPR > Transcribe an interview step by step: verbatim or clean, conventions, a template to copy, review, pseudonymization and GDPR without uploading audio. Canonical: https://ntilia.com/en/guides/interview-transcription Updated: 2026-09-27 ## The essentials First choose the type of transcript (verbatim to analyze speech, clean for content), set your conventions, make an automatic first draft, then review while listening again. Under the GDPR, the voice and text of an interview are personal data: pseudonymize early, keep the key table separate, and if the audio goes to an online service, that service is a processor you need a contract with. Transcribing on your own device avoids that transfer. ## Verbatim or clean: choose before you start - Full verbatim: everything that is said, hesitations, repetitions, laughter, silences and prompts included. For discourse or conversation analysis. - Clean transcript: all the meaning, without the “ums”, false starts or verbal tics. For thematic analysis, reporting or quotes. - Summary: a structured summary with a few exact quotes. To keep a record of a secondary interview, not to analyze it. By hand, four to six hours of work per hour of recording is a common estimate. An automatic first draft, reviewed afterwards, cuts that time sharply, especially for a clean transcript. ## Set your conventions Write your rules once, at the start of the project, and stick to them from one interview to the next: that is what makes transcripts comparable. - Speakers: a short, stable code (INT for the interviewer, P07 for the participant), never the real name. - Timestamps: [mm:ss] at the start of each turn, or every minute. - Uncertain passages: [inaudible 12:40], [unsure: Bertoua?]. - Non-verbal: [laughs], [silence 5 s], [interruption]. - Removals: [name removed], [place removed], for anything identifying. ## A template to copy > **Header** — Interview E07 · date: 2026-09-14 · place: mid-sized town, East Cameroon · length: 52 min · interviewer: INT · type: clean · consent: verbal, recorded at [00:00]. - [00:00] INT: Are you okay with me recording? Your name won’t appear anywhere. - [00:06] P07: Yes, fine. - [00:09] INT: How long have you worked at the market? - [00:14] P07: Since 2019. Before that I was in [place removed], with my uncle [name removed]. [laughs] - [00:31] P07: The checks started after [inaudible 00:33] the year after. ## Step by step 1. **Record cleanly** — Consent stated and recorded at the start, a quiet place, the phone close to the person. Good audio saves hours of review. 2. **Make an automatic first draft** — A speech recognition model such as Whisper produces a timestamped text in minutes. On your own device, the audio goes nowhere. 3. **Review while listening** — Fix proper names, numbers and mixed-language passages. Listen again to every sentence you will quote word for word. 4. **Pseudonymize** — Replace names, precise places and identifying details with codes; keep the correspondence in a separate table, stored elsewhere. 5. **Archive and delete** — Decide how long you keep the audio. Often, once the transcript is reviewed, the recording is no longer needed. ## The GDPR without jargon - The voice and content of an interview can identify a person: they are personal data. - Pseudonymized data (names replaced by codes, key table kept apart) are still personal data: the GDPR still applies. - Only effective anonymization, which makes re-identification impossible in practice, takes data out of the GDPR. A detailed interview rarely gets there. - If you send the audio to an online transcription service, that service processes personal data on your behalf: it is a processor under Article 28, and you need a contract with it (often called a DPA). - Transcribing on your own device avoids that transfer: no third party, no processing contract for that step. > **Check** — This guide is not legal advice. In research, check with your institution’s data protection officer; in a newsroom, with your legal team. ## With nTilia Record the interview into the note, or import an audio file. From Pro, nTilia transcribes it with Whisper on the device, with no network: the transcript lands in the note with [mm:ss] timestamps. You review it, replace names with codes, then the AI can, on request, suggest a cleaned-up version, which you compare Before / After before accepting it. The whole notebook is encrypted at rest by the vault (AES-256-GCM, on the free plan). An interview in a “device” note never leaves the phone. And if the interview feeds an article, the journal publishes it with a Cite block and, from Pro, a Zenodo DOI. ## Frequently asked questions ### How long does it take to transcribe a one-hour interview? By hand, four to six hours is a common estimate. With an automatic first draft and a review, most of the time goes into listening again to the important passages. ### Do I have to transcribe everything word for word? No. Full verbatim serves to analyze how people speak; for content, a clean transcript is enough, as long as the passages you quote are word for word. ### Is an online transcription service GDPR-compliant? It can be, but the service becomes your processor: you need a contract that meets Article 28 and should check where the data goes. Transcribing on the device avoids that transfer. ### Is replacing names enough to anonymize? No: that is pseudonymization, and the data remain personal. A place, a job or an anecdote can be enough to recognize someone; remove those too when needed. ## Go further - [Guide: transcribe interviews offline](https://ntilia.com/en/guides/transcribe-interviews-offline) - [Otter.ai alternatives without the cloud](https://ntilia.com/en/alternatives/otter) - [nTilia for researchers](https://ntilia.com/en/for/researchers) - [nTilia for journalists](https://ntilia.com/en/for/journalists) ## Sources, checked on September 27, 2026 - [CNIL — Recherche scientifique : anonymisation et pseudonymisation](https://www.cnil.fr/fr/recherche-scientifique-hors-sante-enjeux-et-avantages-de-lanonymisation-et-de-la-pseudonymisation) - [CNIL — L’anonymisation de données personnelles](https://www.cnil.fr/fr/technologies/lanonymisation-de-donnees-personnelles) - [CNIL — Guide du sous-traitant (RGPD)](https://www.cnil.fr/sites/cnil/files/atoms/files/rgpd-guide_sous-traitant-cnil.pdf) - [Règlement (UE) 2016/679 (RGPD), article 28](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj?locale=fr)