This agreement is between you and Phonetico. It adds to the Terms of Service, which also govern transcription and review work. You accept it when you enroll as a transcriber, and we record the version you accepted.
1. Accuracy and quality of work
- You will transcribe audio verbatim and accurately, to the best of your ability, in the language you selected when joining.
- You will write in the standard orthography and script of that language, and follow any style or spelling conventions provided in the task instructions.
- If a portion of the audio is genuinely unintelligible, you will mark it using the tagging conventions provided, rather than guessing or omitting it silently.
- You will not pad, truncate, paraphrase, "clean up," or otherwise alter what was actually said, except where task instructions explicitly direct you to.
- You will take only tasks in languages you transcribe reliably, and you will not misrepresent your proficiency in a language.
2. No automated tools
- You will not use speech-to-text software, AI transcription services, language models, or any other automated tool to generate, complete, or substantially assist your transcripts. All submitted work must be your own human transcription.
- Standard text-entry aids (keyboards, input methods, spellcheckers) are permitted. Anything that listens to the audio or produces transcript text for you is not.
- We run automated and manual checks to detect machine-generated transcripts. A submission flagged as machine-generated is rejected. Repeated or deliberate use of automated tools ends your access to transcription work, and all your unpaid balances are forfeited (Section 5).
3. Confidentiality and personal information
- Recordings may contain personal information, such as names, phone numbers, locations, financial details, or other private matters. You will treat everything you hear as strictly confidential.
- You will not record, copy, download, screenshot, share, discuss, or otherwise disclose the content of any recording outside the Platform, in whole or in part, for any purpose.
- When you encounter personal or sensitive information in a recording, you will flag it as instructed in the task guidelines so it can be handled appropriately.
- Your confidentiality obligations continue after you stop working on the Platform.
4. Your transcripts
- The transcripts, annotations, and corrections you submit are Contributions under the Data License Agreement, licensed on the path you work under (Section 3.4 of that agreement).
- You confirm that your submissions are your own original work and do not incorporate material owned by anyone else.
5. Payment, review, and forfeiture
- Review, acceptance, and payment follow the Terms of Service, Sections 3.3, 6, and 7. You are paid only for work that passes review.
- Besides the reasons the Terms of Service list, transcription work may be rejected without payment for being incomplete, for not following the task guidelines, or for suspected use of automated tools.
- If review finds that work you were paid for was fraudulent or machine-generated, we may withhold pending payments and recover what we paid for that work.
- If we end your access to transcription work for fraud, for use of automated tools, or for a deliberate breach of this agreement, all your unpaid balances are forfeited, from recording and transcription work alike. For transcription and review work, this section applies instead of the forfeiture terms in Section 7.5 of the Terms of Service.
6. Suspension and ending
- We may suspend or end your access to transcription work at any time for a breach of this agreement, sustained poor quality, suspected fraud, or misuse of the Platform.
- You may stop at any time. Accepted work completed in good faith before you stop is paid on the normal payment schedule, unless Section 5 applies.
7. Changes to this agreement
When this agreement changes, we show you the new version, and you accept it before you take further transcription or review work.