Transcript (law)

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A transcript is a written record of spoken language. In court proceedings, a transcript is usually a record of all decisions of the judge, and the spoken arguments by the litigants' lawyers. A related term used in the United States is docket, not a full transcript. The transcript is expected to be an exact and unedited record of every spoken word, with each speaker indicated. Such a record was originally made by court stenographers who used a form of shorthand abbreviation to write as quickly as people spoke. Today, most court reporters use a specialized machine with a phonetic key system, typing a key or key combination for every sound a person utters.[ citation needed ] Many courts worldwide have now begun to use digital recording systems. The recordings are archived and are sent to court reporters or transcribers only when a transcript is requested. [1] Many US transcripts are indexed by Deposition Source so that they may be searched by legal professionals via the Internet. Transcripts may be available publicly or to a restricted group of persons; a fee may be charged.

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Types


A transcript is also any written record of a speech, debate or discussion.

Rush transcripts are transcript requests that can be processed and mailed, or picked up, within short time of the request (usually 24 hours or less), provided there are no extenuating circumstances (such as unpaid bills). These expedited transcripts normally cost much more than regular transcripts.

Check against delivery

Sometimes, the first page of a transcript will have the words "Check Against Delivery" stamped across it, which means that the transcript is not the legal representation of the speech, but rather only the audio delivery is regarded as the official record. This is better explained in the French version of the message – Seul le texte prononcé fait foi, literally "Only the spoken text is faithful".

Conversely, it may be that the actual given speech differs from the way the speaker intended, or that it contains extra information that is not pertinent to the central points of the speech and that the speaker does not want to be left as a permanent record. [2] [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition or speech to text (STT). It incorporates knowledge and research in the computer science, linguistics and computer engineering fields.

A deposition in the law of the United States, or examination for discovery in the law of Canada, involves the taking of sworn, out-of-court oral testimony of a witness that may be reduced to a written transcript for later use in court or for discovery purposes. Depositions are commonly used in litigation in the United States and Canada. They are almost always conducted outside court by the lawyers themselves, with no judge present to supervise the examination.

Utterance Smallest unit of speech

In spoken language analysis, an utterance is the smallest unit of speech. It is a continuous piece of speech beginning and ending with a clear pause. In the case of oral languages, it is generally, but not always, bounded by silence. Utterances do not exist in written language, however- only their representations do. They can be represented and delineated in written language in many ways.

<i>Hansard</i> Transcripts of Parliamentary Debates in Britain and many Commonwealth countries

Hansard is the traditional name of the transcripts of Parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official printer to the Parliament at Westminster.

Fighting words are written or spoken words intended to incite hatred or violence from their target. Specific definitions, freedoms, and limitations of fighting words vary by jurisdiction. It is also used in a general sense of words that when uttered tend to create a verbal or physical confrontation by their mere usage.

Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system.

Court reporter

A court reporter or court stenographer, formerly referred to as a stenotype operator, shorthand reporter, or law reporter, is a person whose occupation is to capture the live testimony in proceedings using a stenographic machine and transforming same into an official certified transcript by nature of their training, certification, and usually licensure. This can include courtroom hearings and trials, depositions, sworn statements, and more. Court reporting agencies primarily serve as production houses, and their clients include private law firms, sometimes local or state and federal government agencies, trade associations, meeting planners, and nonprofits.

Stenotype

A stenotype, stenotype machine, shorthand machine or steno writer is a specialized chorded keyboard or typewriter used by stenographers for shorthand use. In order to pass the United States Registered Professional Reporter test, a trained court reporter or closed captioner must write speeds of approximately 180, 200, and 225 words per minute (wpm) at very high accuracy in the categories of literary, jury charge, and testimony, respectively. Some stenographers can reach 300 words per minute. The website of the California Official Court Reporters Association (COCRA) gives the official record for American English as 375 wpm.

Forensic linguistics

Forensic linguistics, legal linguistics, or language and the law, is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of applied linguistics.

Interpreting is a translational activity in which one produces a first and final translation on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a source language.

Subtitles Textual representation of events and speech in motion imagery

Subtitles are text derived from either a transcript or screenplay of the dialogue or commentary in films, television programs, video games, and the like, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen, but can also be at the top of the screen if there is already text at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialogue in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialogue in the same language, with or without added information to help viewers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, who cannot understand the spoken language, or who have accent recognition problems to follow the dialogue.

Real-time transcription is the general term for transcription by court reporters using real-time text technologies to deliver computer text screens within a few seconds of the words being spoken. Specialist software allows participants in court hearings or depositions to make notes in the text and highlight portions for future reference.

A speech-to-text reporter (STTR), also known as a captioner, is a person who listens to what is being said and inputs it, word for word (verbatim), using an electronic shorthand keyboard or speech recognition software and a CAT software system. Their keyboard or speech recognition software is linked to a computer, which converts this information to properly spelled words. The reproduced text could then be read by deaf or hard-of-hearing people.

Telephone interpreting connects human interpreters via telephone to individuals who wish to speak to each other but do not share a common language. The telephone interpreter converts the spoken language from one language to another, enabling listeners and speakers to understand each other. Interpretation over the telephone most often takes place in consecutive mode, which means that the interpreter waits until the speaker finishes an utterance before rendering the interpretation into the other language.

A transcription service is a business service that converts speech into a written or electronic text document. Transcription services are often provided for business, legal, or medical purposes. The most common type of transcription is from a spoken-language source into text such as a computer file suitable for printing as a document such as a report. Common examples are the proceedings of a court hearing such as a criminal trial or a physician's recorded voice notes. Some transcription businesses can send staff to events, speeches, or seminars, who then convert the spoken content into text. Some companies also accept recorded speech, either on cassette, CD, VHS, or as sound files. For a transcription service, various individuals and organisations have different rates and methods of pricing. That can be per line, per word, per minute, or per hour, which differs from individual to individual and industry to industry. Transcription companies primarily serve private law firms, local, state and federal government agencies and courts, trade associations, meeting planners, and nonprofits.

A reporter is a journalist.

A rough ASCII, uncertified rough draft, uncertified unedited rough draft, realtime unedited rough draft, uncertified copy, or simply RASCII is the rough draft version of a transcript created by a court reporter, usually of a legal proceeding. It may have spelling errors as it has not yet been finalized. Once the transcript has been finalized and certified by the court reporter, the RASCII is then transformed into a so called "ASCII".

In the United States, a notary public is a person appointed by a state government, e.g., the governor, lieutenant governor, state secretary, or in some cases the state legislature, and whose primary role is to serve the public as an impartial witness when important documents are signed. Since the notary is a state officer, a notary's duties may vary widely from state to state and in most cases, a notary is barred from acting outside his or her home state unless they also have a commission there as well.

Voice writing is a method used for court reporting, medical transcription, and closed captioning. Using the voice writing method, a court reporter speaks directly into a stenomask or speech silencer—a hand-held mask containing one or two microphones and voice-dampening materials. As the reporter repeats the testimony into the recorder, the mask prevents the reporter from being heard during testimony.

The Persian Speech Corpus is a Modern Persian speech corpus for speech synthesis. The corpus contains phonetic and orthographic transcriptions of about 2.5 hours of Persian speech aligned with recorded speech on the phoneme level, including annotations of word boundaries. Previous spoken corpora of Persian include FARSDAT, which consists of read aloud speech from newspaper texts from 100 Persian speakers and the Telephone FARsi Spoken language DATabase (TFARSDAT) which comprises seven hours of read and spontaneous speech produced by 60 native speakers of Persian from ten regions of Iran.

References

  1. Peter M. Tiers-ma (2000). Legal Language. University of Chicago Press. ISBN   0-226-80302-3.
  2. Check Against Delivery (essay), WeNeedaSpeech.com, 5 Feb 2008. Retrieved Jul 2013.
  3. Speech by President Barroso at the University of Cape Town (Example of a transcript with the "Check Against Delivery" stamp), Europa.EU, 19 Jul 2013. Retrieved 24 Jul 2013.