Expert Audio Transcriber, Egyptian Arabic

THE ROLE

We are hiring expert Egyptian Arabic transcribers to convert audio recordings of native speakers into precise, conventionally formatted written transcripts. The work powers speech recognition, dialogue, and evaluation systems for major AI labs. Audio ranges from clean studio recordings to natural conversational speech in real-world acoustic conditions.

You will be working at the level of expert linguistic judgment. This is not data entry. Decisions about orthography, code-switching, speaker attribution, disfluencies, and non-speech events shape the quality of every model trained on your output.

Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (Masri), the most widely understood Arabic dialect across the Arab world. Project audio includes urban Cairene speech, Delta varieties, and natural code-switching with Modern Standard Arabic and English.

Primary speaker regions: Cairo, Alexandria, Delta region.

• Transcribe audio recordings into accurate, time-aligned written text following Perle's project-specific style guide
• Apply correct conventions for speaker identification, overlapping speech, disfluencies, fillers, false starts, and non-speech events such as laughter, background noise, and music
• Make principled orthographic decisions for dialectal, colloquial, and code-switched speech
• Flag ambiguous segments, uncertain speakers, and audio quality issues using project conventions
• Self-review every submission against Perle's quality bar before delivery
• Engage with QA reviewers on edge cases, calibration sessions, and style guide updates

• Native fluency in Egyptian Arabic with lifelong residence or deep immersion in Egypt
• Fluent reading and writing in Modern Standard Arabic for orthographic decisions on dialectal speech
• Strong working knowledge of Cairene and Delta Egyptian variations
• Comfortable transcribing English-Arabic code-switching as it occurs naturally
• At least two years of professional transcription, captioning, court reporting, broadcast, translation, or linguistic annotation experience
• Demonstrated accuracy at the word level under deadline pressure
• Comfortable with web-based annotation platforms and variable-speed audio playback
• Reliable high-speed internet, quality headphones, and a quiet workspace
• Ability to commit to defined volume per week during active project phases

• Background in Arabic linguistics, journalism, broadcast media, or translation
• Prior work on Arabic NLP, speech recognition, or AI training data
• Familiarity with Arabic transliteration conventions (Arabizi, Buckwalter, IPA)
• Familiarity with IPA or other phonetic transcription systems
• Experience with verbatim versus clean-verbatim transcription conventions

• Paid pilot task before full onboarding so both sides can calibrate
• Per-task or per-minute compensation, with rates tied to audio complexity and turnaround
• Flexible scheduling, with volume scaling up and down based on active client projects
• Direct working relationship with Perle's linguistic leads and QA team
• Eligible for invitation to additional Perle expert projects across related domains

Perle hires experts on the basis of skill, language proficiency, and demonstrated quality. We welcome applicants from every background and every region where our target languages are spoken.