Most of us don't need to transcribe audio too often, which means that paying for a service is generally out of the question. If you just need to do it once and you're not terribly concerned with accuracy, Andy Baio suggests using YouTube's built-in captioning system.
All you need to do is upload your audio recording to YouTube using a service like TunesToTube, wait for YouTube to do its magic (between two and 30 minutes depending on the video length), and then hit the transcription button to see YouTube's automatically created captions. It's by no means perfect and is about as accurate as Google Voice, but if you don't need it too often it gets the job done. Head over to Baio's site for a few samples of the accuracy of the transcriptions.
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A free web app to take the pain out of transcribing recorded interviews. Start transcribing. OTranscribe works on desktop computers only. No more switching between Quicktime and Word. Video file support with integrated player. Open source under the MIT license. As featured on. The transcribe software of today, which convert “audio to text” is capable of working on multiple platforms such as Windows and Mac. They can be used as an interview transcription software or music transcription software, or as a software to transcribe audio files and video files of any sort.
Dirty, Fast, and Free Audio Transcription with YouTube | Waxy