Speech transcription (or just transcription) is the process of converting spoken language or recorded audio into either digital or written text.

It's the type of activity most of us usually (probably) associate with courtrooms, but it's also crucial in many other fields as it's a useful tool for creating accurate and detailed records and documents.

There are tons of very good online transcription services (most of them are AI-powered as well), but they're usually subscription-based (even though, you can find some free ones as well).

If you want to transcribe audio files, and you want full control over the whole process, then perhaps a desktop app might be better suited.

Parlatype is one such app, a simple audio player with manual speech transcription capabilities. It's primarily written for the GNOME desktop environment, but it's available for other Linux distros as well.

Even though the GUI might not inspire thoughts of beauty and awe, Parlatype is, by all accounts, a well-thought-out app. Let's start with the most obvious GUI element, the Waveform panel.

With the help of this waveform section, navigating through the audio files is a breeze (including fairly bulky ones). I was pleasantly surprised about the playback controls, especially the feature that plays the audio file slowly as I type.

There's also a rewind-on-pause feature (automatically rewinds a few seconds), support for timestamps, a nifty LibreOffice extension, and support for a wide range of audio files (thanks to the GStreamer framework).

Other noteworthy features include a start-on-top option, and media keys and foot pedal support.

Clearly, Parlatype was not designed to be the best in the business. As mentioned before, there are AI-powered transcription services that can do a better job (for a bit of money). However, that doesn't mean that Parlatype is a bad app.

Sure, it could use a bit of a GUI overhaul/refresh since it looks a bit dated by modern standards, it would have been even better if it would work with streaming media, but at the end of the day, it's an honest little app that can provide extremely useful in various scenarios.