HOW IS REALTIME USED IN THE LEGAL ENVIRONMENT

REALTIME LITIGATION SUPPORT

By Rhonda Sansom

Realtime technology merges court reporters’ stenographic skills with computer-aided translation software to provide instantaneous access to court or deposition proceedings to attorneys, judges, and other participants in the legal process.

The realtime process originates with the court reporter. The steno alphabet is phonics based. In order to provide accurate realtime translation, reporters have honed their writing skills to differentiate homonym resolutions (their/there, to/two/too/II), insert punctuation and formatting where appropriate, and input instant dictionary entries for proper names or technical vocabulary that are utilized during the proceedings.

ACCESS TO REALTIME FEED

Realtime is provided via software programs called browsers. Two of the more popular programs are CaseView II and Livenote. These programs not only receive and display the incoming realtime feed, they also provide numerous support features that enable searching, scrolling, annotating, electronic bookmarking, and report production during the feed. Since these programs are Windows based, pertinent transcripts (prior witnesses or court proceedings) can be loaded via ASCII disks and accessed by toggling to another window and opening the required files.

Browsing programs offer report generation capabilities, often called paralegal reports. In combination with issue coding, a deposition summary can be completed during the deposition. Issue coding occurs when electronic marking keys are predesignated; i.e., cross-examination, impeachment, appeal, research, closing argument).

The realtime feed and resulting browsing file provides valuable litigation support. The file created by the browser, however, is not a certified transcript and cannot be used for citation purposes or for rebutting the official certified transcript. The court reporter will prepare the official certified transcript at the conclusion of the proceedings.

ALTERNATIVE USES OF REALTIME

Hearing-impaired clients or participants can fully participate in proceedings via the use of realtime technology. Hearing-impaired potential jurors can participate in the voir dire and trial proceedings by having a realtime reporter serve as an interpreter during the trial.

Foreign-language interpreters benefit from the realtime feed when they have the capability to read the entire question instead of translating the proceedings in phrases. This option provides for a smoother and more efficient translation process.

THINGS YOU MIGHT SEE ON A BROWSER SCREEN

The realtime translation begins with the court reporter, but they are not solely responsible for the quality of the translation. The conduct of the participants in the proceedings greatly impact the realtime translation. If you look at the screen and see an increase in untranslates or mistranslates, several things could be happening. Less useable realtime can occur if technical words or proper names are not provided to the reporter prior to the proceedings, if people are crosstalking, if someone is talking too rapidly (especially when reading from documents), if someone is not talking clearly, or if the reporter is fatigued.

There will be words on the screen that will either be untranslates or mistranslates. These are not errors, but simply limitations of the computer dictionary. You will usually be able to tell from the context what the word should be, since a word not recognized by the dictionary will appear phonetically in brackets on the screen.

A mistranslate is a word or series of words that appear in English but are the wrong words. An example would be ‘to be content" appearing as "to beacon tent." With artificial intelligence, these mistranslates are usually resolved before they appear on the screen.

An untranslate is a word that just isn’t in the dictionary and appears either phonetically or in the form of the stenographic alphabet. This is particularly true for technical terms, proper names, and geographic locations. For example, Paul Zelinski’s last name might appear as "S*E/HREUPB/SKEU" or "See/Lynn/Ski."

For those reasons, it is important to provide the court reporter with a word list or copies of technical documents or case citations ahead of time. This list should include not only the names of witnesses and parties, but any names or technical terms that may be mentioned in the proceedings. If there is a word or name where the pronunciation is not obvious, it is helpful to know how to pronounce that phonetically.

It is necessary to pronounce your words clearly. If a person says, "I saw ‘em over there," the court reporter can usually later determine from context whether that should be "him" or "them." It is sometimes difficult to make that determination while writing realtime. Court reporters write phonetically. If you don’t pronounce a word clearly, the realtime will be as garbled as your speech. Of course, when a witness or attorney covers their mouth or turns away from the reporter when speaking, it is almost impossible to provide an accurate translation – or an accurate record, for that matter.

Crosstalking, talking too fast, and reading from documents all can have disastrous effects on realtime translation. Although the court reporter may be able to keep up with the fast examination or sort out two people talking at once, the precision with which each word must be written for the computer to recognize it will suffer.

By integrating court reporting skills with computer software, realtime reporters provide a valuable litigation support tool. Contact us at Gibson Court Reporting (865-546-7477). We would be pleased to provide a realtime demonstration for you at your convenience.