Stenotype: the Court Reporter's Secret Weapon
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- čas přidán 3. 03. 2023
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Stenotypes or Stenographs are machines designed for writing in stenographic or shorthand script, which allows language (especially spoken words) to be written down at a much greater speed than with conventional writing. First developed in the late 19th Century, stenographs were traditionally used by court reporters to produce official records of trials and by secretaries and journalists to take dictation. Digital versions are still in use today for court reporting and live closed-captioning.
SOURCES:
www.depomaxmerit.com/history-o...
www.stenograph.com/history-wr...
kensoffice.blogspot.com/p/brie...
www.madeinchicagomuseum.com/s...
I worked at a company, BaronData, in the 1970s and 1980s, which attached a cassette recorder to the side of the Stenotype machine and fed it into a computer for "translation" and editing. Some random notes ...
It's surprisingly easy to pick up some steno notes and "read" them out loud without having to know all those combinations or think about them. Someone listening can even half-understand what you are saying in general terms.
The paper used is incredibly flimsy, and ink bleeds a lot. I have seen some notes where you relied on the position of the smear to know what key it was.
If you put a pad of that paper on the edge of a desk, then pull a few "pages" of it down to the floor, it is so light and flimsy that you can get it to gently waft down to the floor and restack itself perfectly. I don't remember ever doing a complete pad and timing it, but I could imagine 15-30 minutes. It looks so graceful as it floats down.
Before BaronData, other companies, including Stenotype, had been experimenting with computer aided translation, but their biggest drawback was having one universal dictionary for everybody. We had a disk with a personal dictionary. The reporter would listen to an audio tape of a lot of words and type them in, then our computer would analyze them and create their custom personal dictionary. My understanding was that this was the biggest selling point. Good reporters would get near-perfect translations, like one confusion every ten pages. The universal dictionaries sometimes had to edit several words in every sentence. For instance, vain (ego), (weather) vane, and (blood) vein are all pronounced the same, and a universal dictionary writes them all the same, requiring the reporter to edit the translation and choose which was correct. A good reporter would write them differently and not need to edit that choice.
One universal translator company required reporters to mail their original notes in and wait a week for the output, which of course required all that editing. Worse yet, those notes were the official source of the transcript, not easily copied before mailing, and if the post office lost them or mangled them, there was no transcript at all. Worst of all, the scanner the company used supposedly sometimes jammed or ripped up the notes, and the reporter got back a box of pieces. The BaronData cassette was a second copy, so we never touched their originals.
It was a good company and a good job.
In the movie “Downfall”, there is a scene where Hitler asks his secretary to take dictation. She puts down her pen and picks up a pencil. Aha! She’s using Pittman.
It would likely have been Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift (DEK), a shorthand system designed specifically for German that also uses thin/thick line distinctions. Astute observation, though!
@@CanadianMacGyver I’m fairly certain that I’d read that Pittman was adapted for several languages, including German. You seem to have studied this far more than I; I won’t argue the point.
My Mom was proficient in Pittman. I was once mediocre in Gregg, but have not used it in decades.
It may very well be adapted Pitman; I would have to rewatch the film and see if I can spot a glance of the system being used to be certain. I just wanted to point out that there are many other shorthand systems developed for specific languages - something I don't really touch on in the video.
@@CanadianMacGyver Upon further reflection, I realize that the director COULD have begun the scene with the secretary holding a pencil, but chose to have her switch, thus emphasizing the importance of using a pencil. In other words, they deliberately emphasized the importance of the pencil, throwing in a subtle touch that they knew only a few people would take note of. I appreciate it when a director gets the details correct, as that gives me greater faith in the veracity of the film as whole.
I also note that Hitler’s secretary was still alive at the time the film was made, and was interviewed for the film, so it might have been her who suggested this detail.
Sorry about going off on a wild tangent. ;-)
@@CanadianMacGyver uj
I tried learning "Speedwriting Shorthand" from a home course that used to be offered. I was terrible at it. I completed the course and got their "certificate", but I know I would never be able to do it professionally. My mom learned Gregg shorthand in high school, and was fairly good at it. She couldn't understand why I was no good at it. I used to wonder about the court reporting jobs. Now that I see how they work, I'm sure I'd be awful at that too. It's remarkable how some people's brains can do amazing things.
Thanks for the interesting story.
My grandfather (a food industry economist) had very bad handwriting. He did not know shorthand, but his handwritten documents could only be read correctly by a stenographer.
In my student years (70s), I used my own system of abbreviations when writing down lecture notes. For example, pictograms and mathematical symbols instead or within some long words; I replaced some long Ukrainian or Russian words with short English words or digits (based on consonance).
My classmates often asked to lend them my notes. Over time they learned to decipher my writing system. Our Cuban student used abbreviations based on the Spanish language. And the Hungarian student wrote notes in short combinations of letters that only he himself understood.
But, reading the handwritten draft documents of my colleagues, I can immediately determine which of them served as a radio operator in the army. They replaced some Cyrillic letters that were inconvenient to write with Latin ones (for example, “V” instead of “Ж” [zh], not phonetically, but according to the rules of Morse code. And some words and phrases were replaced with combinations of letters or digits used in army or amateur radio slang.
In uni I just wrote down the math, dropping all words since it was mostly self evident
Wow, you made that so clear. I had a stenographer girl friend who always confused me as to it's workings. Funny point. She got herself confined in jail for not getting a transcript to a defense lawyer in a "reasonable" time. The judge gave her a week to get it done but she wanted a few days with me at lake Tahoe and missed the deadline. She was called into chambers and "escorted" to a room and kept there until she finished the transcript. They finished her food and a cot for the two days and one night it took to finish the two week trial.
In the USAF I had to transcribe recorded speech. The best I could do was 4 to 1, 4 minutes typing to 1 minute of conversation. The fastest people in my unit could do 2 to 1. That equates to about 120 words per minute. Also, we were using manual typewriters.
On manuals? That's haulin'.
60wpm on a typewriter is actually pretty dang good though
Hi OP : did you have notice adaptations of your body / hands to acomodate this intessive work ?
Thank you for your take.
An aunt of mine could type as fast as you speak. She once typed a conversation my family had, for fun. It was incredible.
Than you, Gilles. Finally I get some detail on the system I replaced. A colleague and I were the first two floor reporters to replace the stenographers the very day after that system was retired. That was for Hansard on the Floor of our Canadian House of Commons. Our speech was inaudible to the MPs by design since by Parliamentary tradition like many other parliaments we were agreed to be invisible to the Members of Parliament meaning we were only visible to the Speaker, the Clerk and the Sergeant-at-Arms.
From the two pairs of desks in the centre of the Aisle we were the first in the implementation of the covered hand microphone system that delivered our spoken words straight to disk in the recording system for the Parliament side of the House. The Senate used their own staff.
We spoke the names and ridings of the Members as they began to speak and added to the record whatever the Members' microphones did not pick up and the interjections of other Members while another speaker was in full flight. Our work was fed to transcribers in 15-minute pieces on tape which was then pieced together into the Record of the Proceedings of the House. The finished product for any MP that spoke was on his desk within 30 minutes of the time he spoke the words on the Floor, reviewed by editors but unexpurgated.
Often the remarks of the interrupter were made without benefit of microphone (or recognition by the Speaker of the House) and often behind our line of sight so in addition to having to memorize the names and ridings of all 301 MPs it was definitely helpful to be able to recognize them by their voices...in both Official Languages, of course.
Thanks for revealing the nuts and bolts behind the Floor Stenographers' machines. I always wondered....
Were your tapes then transcribed by stenographers? It seems they would have to manage that turn around, in which case you were adding the ability to handle even more complex audio and cultural environment issues than having the stenographer themselves determine what to focus on.
@@nopenheimer We replaced stenographers with the new system. That was the whole idea Our work was fed to transcribers in 15-minute pieces ( I did that too after I taught myself to type) on tape which was then pieced together into the Record of the Proceedings of the House.
Stenographers were extinct.
How were you able to distinguish between English and French transcription?
@@bernhardwall6876 All involved were/are fluently bilingual since we have two official languages, French and English. The MPs tended to speak in their native languages so their tapes were given to transcribers that used that native language. To directly answer your question, the tapes were marked with predominant language and time in the recording room. Bits and pieces were edited by respective experts. The rest is details. All transcriptions were immediately fed to editors using the same pattern. Don't forget it was all computerised and we were using proprietary software written expressly for purpose.
Reference material was The Oxford Dictionary for English and Petit Larousse for French. Only those two were acceptable. That also applied to the Civil Service at large. Consistency is vital across an organization of that size especially if it is officially _bilingue._
Often one of us transcribers would come across a novel or unusual word. It was looked up then and there, then yelled out to the room by the transcriber giving the exact spelling followed by the words "Verified Oxford" or "Verifiee Larousse" and that spelling was used on future occasions in the text.
I took court reporting in the early '80s in Philadelphia. I got up to 180 words a minute (on a very easy jury charge), but alas, I never got any faster. Instead of the syllables going from my ears to my fingertips, I would repeat them in my head. The harder the words, the louder I silently yelled. (It's akin to a musician looking at the notes on a score and repeating the name of each note before playing it.)
The transcript is known as "the cold record." There are symbols for the comma, the period, and the question mark -- but NOT for an exclamation point, because adding an exclamation point is considered editorializing. Even if the lawyer or the witness is yelling, the court reporter is only supposed to type in the words; they can't interpret mood, intent, tone of voice, or anything that could be considered a personal interpretation of demeanor, questions, or responses.
I had several occasions to testify as an expert witness in either deposition or open court and I always wondered how the stenographer managed to record everything. The more recent ones the stenographer also made an audio recording as a backup.
PS, I respect a man who ties his own bow ties rather than do clip-ons.
Yes...audio..well GOOD ENOUGH ALWAYS...
.the objections are bull
.
The machine invented by Zucco is still in use today in the Italian Parlament. It was already capable of "chords" and different combinations allowed to distinguish between different sounds of the same letters like hard or soft Gs or Cs.
The ones in use today have evolved from the original ones take advantage of being a lot like a Piano keyboard, in fact current stenographers in the parliament don't use mechanical stenographic machines anymore, they use keyboards that are derived from modified musical "MIDI keyboards" for PCs and a dedicated software.
The ones in use in parliament at the moment(since 2003) use the Midi protocol but via USB cable.
(I find fascinating that some entusiasts of the "Michela system" have built even bluetooth michela keyboards to use in combination with tablets)
They also write in sillabic combinations and there is a set of sillables that are used as abbreviations to represent long words or combinations of words that are used often in parliament, for example a "chord" equivalent to "SPOC" represents the standard greeting formula (Signor Presidente, Onorevoli Colleghi - Mr/Mrs President, Honorable Collegues) typically used at the beginning of every speech in Parliament.
The machine was called "Michela" after the inventor Antonio Michela Zucco ( might look like a "female" middle name but I think It was in fact part of his Surname/Family name)
1:52 for law, the English had long used a manuscript shorthand in which the same sets of characters were elided using symbol-letter glyphs all common across Norman, English Latin, and Middle English.
I had seen on cold case murder videos that *often* reopening an old case was difficult or impossible because stenotyped records were unreadable without the presence/translation of the original typist (who might be dead or very old), I thought it B.S. ..... Now I see that each one uses his own little tricks so unreadable to new ones. Thanks.
Not BS! The only BS is that the stenographer isn't required to provide a transcript into evidence. (they charge an insane rate _per page_ for those transcripts, btw)
I have seen these in movies so many times, and I have wondered until today how it works. Thanks !
Thanks for this video. I took shorthand in high school 50 years ago, mostly because I would be the only guy in class. I do recall it always smelled so good with all the different perfume aromas wafting around. I passed the class but never used it afterwards. Your video brought back pleasant memories. Thanks!
I would bet a LOT of "Pleasant" memories. When I was in High school 2 Guys took Hone Ek. and we really razzed them. Until we figured it out. Waaaaaaaaa..........
I just discovered Gilles' videos a couple of days ago, and I thoroughly enjoy his deep research and clear presentation -- on many varied topics.
I was also the only guy in *my* 12th grade shorthand class, back in 1975-76. I'd won the typing award (for speed and accuracy) in 9th grade, so I guess that kind of thing interested me. Touch typing has been a great benefit, ever since then, in my computer programming work and everyday computer use.
I actually won the shorthand award at the end of class, and my teacher suggested I could get a good job as somebody's personal secretary, though I chose to go on to college instead of trying that out. I *have* frequently used my shorthand (Gregg, Diamond Jubilee series) to take class or personal notes, or to write something I didn't want others to (easily) read. Lots of my shorthand never got transcribed, however, so when I look at it now, I sometimes have a hard time reading it unless I remember the context.
Anyway... it was interesting to learn of another guy who took shorthand, though for a different reason.
My late grandmother often talked about how her father made her take dictation off of the radio when she was a child…by the time she was an adult, she was already skilled in shorthand from all of those years. It oft impressed me how she could interpret all of those seemingly arcane scribbles, thanks for discussing this nearly lost art…🥰
Grandma would be most proud…👍🏻
I’m sure she would!!
I hear people say much the same about the IPA. tbh, you can find much the same said about just about any written language if you delve into history. Hell, just look at modern Japanese systems, something like 3k logograms in Kanji alone. Not to mention Hiragana and Katakana. (makes the 150 or so glyphs you need to know for the IPA look simple in comparison)
addendum: If you can, get someone who cannot read to describe what a newspaper article or similar looks like to them. Chances are they will know some words purely from memorizing that particular word. I have heard it described as a jumble of lines and symbols with the occasional word that clearly pops out to them.
edit: Food for thought. Ever translate treble clef to bass clef or vice-versa in realtime while playing? This was something I used to do for practice (it can really speed up your ability to read sheet music as well as open up an entirely different set of instruments). This is the closest I have ever gotten to what stenographers do.
When I was a newspaper photographer, I worked with a reporter who had developed his own personalized shorthand. Many times on the drive back to the office, going over his notes, he'd ask me what the subject of the interview had said. :p
How wonderful to have parents who teach their children something useful, and set them up with a skill for life.
I've always been fascinated by Stenographers, everytime I saw one on film or TV I wondered exactly what they were doing!
This is awesome. I work for a lawyer and a notary. One of the things I do for the lawyer is booking a stenographer, because there's stuff that doesn't always happen in court that still needs to be properly reported. Now I know what a stenotype is. In Quebec, all stenographers are on a list, and it says which languages they are qualified for (French and/or English) and which techniques, the lion's share use either stenotype ("sténotypie" in French) or stenomask ("sténomasque"), which entails an "enclosed" microphone (won't pick up outside noise, since it's mounted in a mask directly in front of the stenographer's face), some are qualified in both, or in both languages on one. There are also a handful, rather old-school, who use stenography ("sténographie") But those who know how to use either a stenotype or a stenomask (both entail 2-3 years to master) can reach up to 225 words per minute.
One OUTSTANDING presentation! The brain-power to invent, design and manufacture such devices is incredible. And the mastery to operate such devices is, again, incredible. Thank you for this episode!👍
Excellent video. I had no idea stenography was such a complex thing. I'm not surprised it takes years to become skillful at it.
at 72 years old, i've always been fascinated by these devices. your treatment is the first actual information i've ever seen. npw i realize that such a counterintuitive system would have been totally impossible for me even when i was young and sharp. thanks!
I recently was involved in a deposition. This video has given me a much greater respect for the stenographer. Awesome job, keep up the Great work!
This was great. You always find a way to make engaging, comprehensible content about obscure technology. It's a real gift!
I'd always wondered about this system. It just amazes me that people could become so proficient.
Court stenographers can be pretty assertive, especially toward lawyers, if they can’t hear what’s said clearly. In some ways they are the most important person in the courtroom-certainly the hardest to replace.
I spent a few years in Foster care. and one of the odd early memories of that time was seeing a very similar (but electromechanical) version of this stenographic machine. The Stenographer was a regular at my court hearings so I actually kinda knew her. at one point she let me tinker with the buttons for a few minutes (with some directions) and actually read out the sentence I had *with help of course* managed to write.
It's one of those really odd things my brain retained for seemingly no reason (I even remember what color the machine was. it was a maroon color). The auto-translation software and monitors hadn't become a thing yet really (hers had a two-column LCD and that's it, it didn't even translate)
Yes, that's interesting. During my studies, they also told me about this specific Hebrew notation. I heard that they considered vowels to be an impure, human addition that should not be mixed with the divine language, so vowels were written apart. During my studies, they also showed me an experiment proving how many things in a language we understand from the context and how much information redundancy there is. They provided a text where only the first and last letters of the words were written correctly, and the rest were mixed up. Despite everything, the text was easy to read, and many did not even immediately notice that something was wrong with it. Having said all this, I must admit that I know a journalist from another newspaper who can type on a laptop as fast as politicians talk. However, whether he writes correctly right away or whether he uses some shorthand system, I don't know.
Seems like this would be a good application for Braille keyboardists. The Braille keyboard is nine keys, three for each hand, a spacebar for thumbs, and a backspace and carriage return. The Braille alphabet is also divided into three types (called “grades”) with Grade 1 giving a one to one mapping to the English alphabet and grades 2 and 3 providing contractions for common letter combinations and whole words.
There was a team between the witness and the court record. The Certified Stenographic Reporter used the Stenotype in the courtroom. The Orator read the record aloud into a recorder microphone. The tape then went to the Transcriber, along with notes specifying the case, type and date of hearing, which court and which judge heard it, and how many copies were to be typed. This was usually "O and One," meaning an original for the archives and a single carbon copy for the judge's records, but sometimes it could be as many as O and 4, thus giving prosecution and defense copies as well, rather than making them have copies made.
Prior to the early 1960s, there might be two Transcribers working with a single CSR, but after the arrival of the IBM Selectric series of typewriters, transcription speed improved enough that one could keep up with a normal workload.
Thanks for explaining. It’s all I can do to write the normal way.
This is the most comprehensible overview of stenography, much appreciated. I learned more from you then the past 20+ videos I have watched on Stenography.
So complicated.What a strange career move.I remember my sister writing using the pitman system that she learnt at a collage in Ealing.
Ah yes, I remember learning Gregg in middle school. My mother, a secretary, used it for years.
I'm about to put a fuel injection LS motor in an old 85 chevy pickup and I've never done this before, I'll be just fine but this video makes my brain hurt. My mother just passed and how i wish i could tell her how impressed i am she knew short hand. Looking back there was always her kitchen notes that were indecipherable by mere mortals. As with most things, there's a lot more going on than one would assume just casually observing. Thanks Canadian, i always learn so much whenever i come near my kanuck brothers
Fascinating! And thanks for saying, 'Spelled' instead of 'Spelt'.
I actually know a few television subtitlers in the UK. Nowadays they either use a normal keyboard (for pre-recorded shows) or speech-to-text through a special interface (for live events/news), along with a separate keypad in both cases to control the caption colour and position and for some quick macros (undo, delete last word, things like that).
what a great channel this is!
all sorts of stuff that I didn't know I needed to know.
How fascinating. I thought they used regular or smaller typewriters and had learned to type incredibly fast. Looks like the decyphering would be quite slow and sometimes ambiguous.
There was anoher shorthand used in the 50s and 60s, i think, called Speedwriting. It used actual letters with some mods.
At about @11:30 I started imagining what it would be like to stenograph what someone was dictating. I started imagining back, or recalling, what was just being said by Gilles in this video and within a minute I was able to keep up pretty easily. If I only had a way to output what I was recalling to myself it would be totally doable. It's a strange feeling listening to what's being said while thinking/intending to what has already been said. In a way it's like listening to a song that's overlapped itself by 2-3 seconds but at the same time it's not because what you're doing is not the same thing as what you're hearing. Human brains are crazy!!! That's my 2:30AM comment for the nite.
I've always wondered about what that silent lady in the corner of the courtroom drama was doing. Thanks for a thorough overview.
Now there is increased of voice recognition systems. We used it for medical reports in which we physicians dictated into a microphone and the system learned from the individual doctor the fine points of their speech. The resulting reports were revised and needed the occasional correction, but was pretty good. It eliminated secretaries, or reduced their numbers in a given department. The system we used was called “ Dragon” , but there are other systems.
Watched a few of your vids but this one got me hooked.
I enjoy your podcasts, always interesting, fast paced.
This is a great video! Thank you for making this.
Man I LOVE the opening music to TCOC videos!
You know freaking what? This is the 3rd video I've watched, and I like this devices subject/theory a lot. Awesome informational videos, subscribed
22:08 A bit surprised plover didn't use the "SZ" ending for the repeated s sound, which also works!
Fascinating presentation. I imagine the stenographer is going to become the person who corrects computer audio to text on the fly. I wonder what exotic devices will be invented to do it. Maybe they will demand mental rewiring as well.
Excellent video and explination. Thank you for uploading.
Great video! Thank you very much. Obviously, you did a lot of research for this one. I have always wondered how these stenography machines worked.
I always wondered. Recently due to you know 2020 court cases have gone onto videoconferencing. I was watching a news thing I think where they ask a stenographer about how this affected them and they said it was nice having the recording as a back up to assist their record so they could go back and double check things as they transcribed it from their shorthand. I really think the utilization of both has been underutilized. And as an audio person a lot of this Hass to do with any qualified personnel using underfunded non-appropriate equipment to record audio. I think we're going into the next age where there's going to be a video as well. Although we will have to worry about deep fakes technology manipulation video.
Hear, hear!
At least for the time being, the specific microhertz deviations in power line frequencies that can be detected in nearly all recordings (that annoying hum) can be precisely matched to a standard public record. It's subtle enough that most people are likely still completely unaware of it as material evidence.
Recording equipment has indeed improved significantly. For example, we no longer use linear recording media ("tape"), so the recording does not have to stop (and rewind) to replay any previous content. But, the recorder still has the issue of not being able to have things repeated clearly "for the record". We have also progressed in the areas of voice recognition, so it's possible to quite accurately electronically transcribe things, but that still has issues with understanding how everyone speaks - again coming back to the computer not being able to ask for things to be repeated clearly. Yes, technology has advanced significantly, but our court systems have not. :-) (I was amazed and annoyed by the lack of the court reporter's stenograph to make normal english output -- to produce a transcript would "take hours"... longer, in fact, than the testimony. in fact, 9min of audioless video was more valuable than 3 days of people talking.)
( Anyone who's used YT's automatic captioning might say otherwise. ;-) The fact that it's possible at all... and it gets it right most of the time.)
My grandmother knew Pittman and my mother knew Gregg….
Great informational video. Thanks for the education.
new to your channel, great content. thank you for this presentation. all my adult life i wondered what the ct reporters "typewriter" was. i guessed it must be some sort of shorthand typewriter.
your example sentence explanation made me feel like my head was going to xplode. lol
it left me with much respect for ct reporters. thought i read that they own their own stenotypes.
thx for upload.
An excellent video. I always wondered how those things worked. I supose a major part of a court recorders job is transcribing the steno into actual text.
Love the CED fanfare at the intro there!
I just realized how hilarious it would be for a stenographer to record a pentecostal preacher when they caught the holy ghost.
the trial I was on the jury for in Alaska had no stenographer. Audio recording only. The tapes are not even kept once the appeals are done. According to the judge in the case. (Someone asked during Voir dire. Which was recorded.) While called to serve, I was dismissed for cause the other times I was called in Alaska. I was randomly dismissed for grand jury duty this past summer in Oregon, and no steno was present for the jury selection, but audio was being recorded.
great channel; an example of YT algorithm doing justice. hope to see u hit a mil subs within a year or two
Great video!
a couple of points. early in the video you mentioned that all people who use stenography have their own system. though this is more true than not for machine stenography for written stenography (short hand) it is usually not the case. with standardized systems like DEK one writer can fluently read something another person has written.
secondly it might be worth looking in more depth at the layout of the keys of the stenograph. they are laid out so that the largest number of consonant clusters can be written. for example, s is the left most key, because you often get "str" or "spl" at the start of a syllable but very rarely "lps". for the right hand, however, r is at the left and s is at the right, so you can write consonant clusters at the end of syllables like rbs or rts.
Thank you, I have always wanted to know how stenography works.
More than 1 audio stream could allow filtering out any random noise. Especially if one of the stream inputs is attached directly to the person in the stand. Playback of the audio also need not stop the recording.
It really seems like recording, if implemented properly, would be a far superior solution.
I agree that recording would be a superior solution, although I would not mind a stenographer working as a backup. With a stenographer, there is always the possibility that he/she mishears a word. However, if the proceedings were recorded, then you can always go back to the original source material to determine what was said, or at least have several people listen to attempt to discern what was stated.
Regardless, all trials should be video/audio recorded, with these recordings placed online, where any person can freely watch the video at any time. It is long past time to shine a little sunlight on our third branch of government.
VERY INTERESTING . thank you sir .
I’m not sure I could learn this system myself , because it different from the way normal speech is carried on . I phenetically spell English words , but this like learning a whole different way to spell . Foreign to common sense .
What you didn’t explain was how a stenographer makes corrections to what they wrote verses what they heard .
stenography is rarely used on close captions these days, as 100% accuracy, that being defined by the stenographers transcripts and a recording [ these days depositions are done in video too] and its all computer based text to speech, including translation into many languages.
Thanks
I wonder how often stenographers have to ask someone to repeat what was said. I don't think I've ever seen a movie or TV show where the stenographer does much of anything but sit recording. I'd probably need to ask for a repeat every few sentences!
Feature film where one of the main characters is taking a test to become a court reporter: The Buddy System with Susan Sarandon and Richard Dreyfuss.
19:30
I think it could be typed KAB/"N"ET/F/KAUR/OFTS/OPB/OUR/OEPB/TKEF/S*ES
unstressed syllables can be dropped between phrases: kab-in-et becomes kab-i-net, etc. F can also represent V or S when it is needed.
Love this guy really interesting
1:22 Just want to say how it was much more difficult to type quickly on an old manual typewriter, as opposed to an electric typewriter or, of course, a word processor. It really takes a lot of effort to depress the keys fully on a manual typewriter in order for it to strike the ribbon onto the paper with sufficient force to leave a clear imprint of each letter. The typists of the day must have suffered from painful repetitive strain injury (RSI)
Dad had one of these beauties when taking down testimony during court martials.
Would not it be easier to simultanously record sound and use automatic speech to text system? Under constant supervision, court recorder can check in real time what was said (and recorded) and how it was transcribed. In doubtful moments he can interrupt and manually correct transcription. To generate an official document after session he has sound record, transcription and his own voice recorded when clarifying. It is much more than sufficient for precise record.
Its like how Baldrick spelled Christmas as : Kweznuz!
Some closed captions are done by voice these days. My sister's friend works at CBC in Ottawa and gave us a tour so I got to meet the guy that does speech to text for the CC
Fascinating, though I still don't understand it. Interesting that everyone has their own technique so the only person who understood what happened is the one who wrote it!
Ikr. It was so interesting, but then I said, "huh?"n lol
As someone who routinely uses 4-5 languages over three distinct groups (Germanic, Romance and some Baltic) I often wonder if Stenography would allow a court recorder to accurately document statements in those languages (e.g: If I had to give the statement _„Дім там, де кіт“_ - Ukrainian for _„Home is where the Cat is“_ - In my testimony) without having to actually understand them? As Stenography is primarily phonetic this seems like it might be the case. 💱📼😇
But on the back of this: All of the Stenographs I've seen have been used in English-language settings. Might the different phonetics of different languages require different Stenograph configurations to accurately accommodate them? 😇
yep, it would most certainly be a challenge. as far as i know (i've only been learning stenography for about a month) you learn steno in a particular language and the keyboard itself has many asumptions about the language built in. the stenographer can only write that fast because they have excellent knowledge of the language being spoken.
Guess these "Stenographs" must be highly paid.? It's such a singular job, & highly skilled I doubt many people take it up.? The new digital machines must help a great deal.?
When I was in private practice as an attorney and had to get my clients to pay for the services of a court recorder when we did depositions, it typically ended up costing around $800 for taking several hours worth of testimony. So the stenographer was being paid at a pretty similar hourly rate to myself (although I was a first-year associate fresh out of law school at the time, so my hourly rate was nothing spectacular). Now I work for the government, so I don't directly see what the court reporters are getting paid anymore. I believe they are technically paid by the word, at least in my jurisdiction, and lawyers like to talk a lot so it adds up.
Very interesting although I don’t think I will need to take this up as a new skill!
One mystery less for me:). Thank you.
27:00 Additionaly, if you turn the written text in digital form later, the judge and lawyers can find a specific spot via text-search... Try finding a specific spot on a video- or voice-recording, it´s impossible, there´s no search-machine for that...!!!
android phones can do that for voice recording.
Amazing. Almost like encryption
If it would be possible, could you tell me what song you use in your intros? I've heard it before but can't point in any specific direction.
The opening few bars of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
@@MrBanzoid Thank you very much.
Sounds sooo confusing. I guess I just dont have the knack for languages.
What’s the song at the very beginning of the video?
I learned the Gregg shorthand in school looong ago . When i tried to explain how it worked to my son, he didn't believe me. He looked at me like, oooook 🤭😆
Were the omitted letters originally arbitrary, or was there some logic behind the lack of, for example, the letter 'c'?
the paper looks like the same size as cash register or adding machine paper so you could use that.
Cabinet of curiosities looks like alphabet soup when he's finished😅
My brain is melting.
The code is cool.
is there a system like Plover for translating Pitman Shorthand?
Yeh its all a bit above me !
My wife is a court reporter, and in heated depositions she sometimes writes over 350 words per minute.
We have come a long way to "AI speech to text".
The explanation of the reason for bankruptcy of the Universal Stenotype co went over me, hopefully someone can elaborate: Why and how would companies accept government munitions contracts, would they produce or procure it, and how would this benefit the war effort or the parties involved? Why would the companies have stock left over after the war? Was it some sort of war bonds program?
Just a guess... the gov kept ordering bombs until the day they stopped dropping them. And then they canceled those orders. Any stock you had but had not yet delivered was now "excess inventory." War is not a Just In Time(tm) process.
After the debacle of the Great War, US procurement was pursued very differently in WWII (at the behest of U.S. business owners, who had suffered under both New Deals). In exchange for a "price control" of 10% profit, that profit was guaranteed: if the company had an order, and they made the goods, they _would_ be purchased.
At the end of the war, many orders were canceled, so while companies lost those future profits, they were paid for the part of orders they had already completed. So while the economy slowed at war's end, they did not go bankrupt.
@@somercet1 Thanks, that clears it up a bit. So the products would be war related, and not just munitions? I mean not every company would be able to convert to munitons production, but most would be able to make other stuff; depending on what kind of company.
Very interesting but it made my head hurt.
Thats the reason speach to text software needs to be improved more.
Yikes! WAYYY to complicated for my little pea-brain! Very interesting, though!