Time again for the Eclipse Software Professionals (ESP) Network convention. This annual event is pretty exciting and informative stuff for the court reporter community. Before I tell you about the convention, though, what exactly is a court reporter?
Often called "the silent man (or woman) in the court room," court reporters are the professionals in charge of quickly and accurately recording everything said during a court proceeding. Their documentation is the official word. Sometimes called Stenographers (after the brand of machine), their documentation is recorded using a machine called the shorthand writer or stenotype.
The shorthand writer has been the tool of court reporters for decades, as well as for CART and closed captioning services (any time you've ever watched a live TV event with captions, like sports for instance, you were likely reading the work of a stenographer). In the right hands, these complex machines produce the quickest human-generated recordings in the world via shorthand abbreviation and codes. The shorthand writer simultaneously resembles an electronic typewriter and a set of piano keys, and they create words and phrases from hotkeys and "chords" of simultaneous keystrokes.
Mastering the shorthand machine also means mastering the way reporters mentally process speech. Court reporters need to record words and gestures just as quickly as people speak. It takes most people years of training before they're able to pass certification tests, the minimum of which require 225 words-per-minute (WPM). More experienced users can achieve even more amazing speeds in the 260-300+ WPM range. It's said that the equivalent typing speed using a standard QWERTY keyboard would only produce about 60 WPM with the same amount of keystrokes, so it's easy to see why the shorthand writer is so well respected.
I know, that's a lot of information about stenography. Maybe more than you needed, but I find this stuff pretty fascinating. The career can be closely compared to professional language translators, only in a legally official capacity, and all the while they're working with machines which are so complex, they're literally allowing humans to encode phrases in a different language. Learning and maintaining that skill takes some strong dedication and constant upkeep.
...which leads me back to the ESP Network convention! Many virtuosos of this craft use Eclipse software, and the ESP Network convention is an annual training expo where both new and experienced users go to brush up and chat with fellow stenographers.
The software itself records audio and synchronizes it with the shorthand documentation while it's typed on the machine. It then translates the shorthand to whole phrases in real-time, so the conversation can be checked and referenced immediately by others (like while in the middle of a court case). Very useful stuff.
The catch with this is that Eclipse is a Windows-only program. I know what you're wondering: "can it be used in a Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac virtual machine to run within Mac OS X?"
Why, yes... yes it can.
Like so many applications, Eclipse runs just as well within Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac as it does on a normal Windows PC. Our SmartMount feature even allows a virtual machine to automatically recognize the USB device that stenotypes use as a security key, then automatically connect it to Windows when it's plugged in.
For Eclipse users who love their Macs, Parallels' own David Spackman will be attending the ESP Network convention in Las Vegas this weekend (May 29, 30 & 31) and presenting alongside Mr. Keith Vincent. David will also be at Booth #4; he'll have some box copies of Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac to give away, and it will be a great opportunity to learn about the additional ways virtualization can benefit Mac users in the legal profession.
And now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I shall reproduce this entire blog in machine shorthand:
P R L T
A
P F B L
KP L
SK T
... just kidding. I have no clue what that says.
A couple of corrections: No keyboard ever produced by Stenograph, Inc., has had pressure sensitivity. However, the Passport writer from Advantage Technologies, Inc, does have the ability to track how far the keys moved in order to be able to tell an intentional keystroke from an accidental one.
Also, in the final segment, there is no "Q" on any shorthand keyboard that I'm aware of, including the standard English keyboard, the UK Palantype keyboard, the French Grandjean keyboard, the Italian Michela keyboard, or the German, French, Spanish, Portugese, Hebrew, Greek or Hungarian layouts for the standard shorthand keyboard. So I guess that sequence says "My writer is broken."
Jeremy Thorne
Director of Research and Development
Eclipse CAT Software
Posted by: Jeremy Thorne | May 28, 2009 at 08:43 AM