Stenographers do more than just type what people say, they also have to identify the speaker which includes asking people to speak louder, stop talking over one another, and repeat or spell words that could be misunderstood. This is why California's push for automated/computer stenographers failed so spectacularly.
That's interesting. I wonder if a good multi microphone setup could resolve a lot of those issues. AI is quite capable of separating out speakers these days even if they talk over each other even on a single microphone but with multiple sources it's surprisingly good.
@@thewisefool4049 Aye, this is a relatively trivial problem to solve for anyone with the proper budget. The original comment is actually a list of reasons why we should get rid of the human element. The only reason the stenographer has to do all of the things the OP said is because they're a fallible human.
@@Kittoes0124 I work in that exact field and I can tell you that speaker diarization is far from being trivial, it's even more complicated than speech recognition, which is far from perfect on non-ideal audio (such as in a court room).
My mum was a stenographer, she still has the stenograph from her time in Hansard. I tried to learn, but couldn't wrap my head around it, it's crazy impressive. She says that during conversations, her brain will translate the words into steno.
Well, this is kinda how it works. With any action really. It's a device. A tool. I guess, what your mom was saying, she didn't have to deliberately think about particular sylab or part of the word, being aware of the process 100% of time, and that's more like "muscle memory". Riding a bike or something, you don't think what you're doing exactly when turning for example, you're just doing it. Which translates to some specific action. (As a matter of fact, to turn the bike right, what we are really doing is turning the steering left. Sound pretty idiotic at first.)
I was a pretty talented musician when I was younger and I still almost unconsciously figure out the chord changes in songs I hear and compose the melody and harmonies in my head. When you’re trained to do something at a subconscious level, you can never just unlearn it.
When i was younger i could type between 140-160 wpm on a qwerty and the typing training program had you type from books and speech. I also notice that sometimes my fingers will twitch in the positions of words i and others say. Also if you have spent 30 years on the internet communicating (mostly the parts back in the beginning) you can have a conversation in text as fast as you can with speech. (Until carpal tunnel ruins your day from using non ergonomic keyboards your whole life). But the stenograph is as alien to me as hieroglyphics
Well, it's sort of their job to transcribe what everyone is saying, I'm pretty sure most if not all court reporters can do that. But I agree it's very impressive
My father was a career Court Reporter, a “CSR” actually which is a “Certified Shorthand Reporter”. The good money was when a legal team ordered a “daily”, which is a typed, record in english of the day’s proceedings which had to be dictated after hours, and delivered to the typist for final typing. Dictation involved reading those stenograph notes from the narrow accordian folded paper from his stenograph “steno” into a special tape recorder (Dictograph) and giving the typist the tape recording from which to type from. When he was involved in a daily, we didnt see him till weekends, but he was always in a great mood for the substantial extra dough he earned from this out of the norm service to the legal teams. Interesting video….
My mom has been a stenographer or court reporter for 30 years now. When she started, the teacher warned the class it was a dying industry. 30 years later and the industry is full of middle to late age women who are making absolute bank because no one is coming in to continue the profession. I would say it’s sad, but my mom and her fellow group of 50 year old court reporters would disagree. More money for them. 😂
Steno has been very difficult to get started in, but thanks to Plover and Open steno community it's been made more accessible to anyone who wants to learn. You can actually learn for free right now with Plover and resources like Typey Type and art of chording.
@@tncorgi92 A lot of job security and overtime available in turning the steno to text. There are little differences between different people in steno after years of doing it.
if anyone is looking for a way to dip their feet in steno without buying anything I highly recommend Plover, it's free & open source and makes your keyboard work like a steno machine
Plover is also a type of bird in Australia that looks like a magpie but is extremely aggressive during breeding season and has tiny poisonous claws on its wingtips that it tries to scratch you with as it endlessly dive bombs intruders within its mile wide radius of protection. It inspired the brand No Fear which has eyes on the reverse side of its products because people thought they would be more wary of cartoon eyes on the back of hats since they blindside cyclists and pedestrians endlessly. Plover season is scarier than the usual snakes, spiders etc tourists think they have to worry about
Im a janitor in a courthouse and have spoken with Stenogrophers here about their machines and their uses. And they wont be replaced by audio recordings anytime soon because the courts legally keep all copies from the stenograph and its translation into words. Those are legal documents and cant be destroyed or altered and have to be used in case of retrials, appeals and other such court operations and have to be kept on record for any lawyers to come and request a copy in case they are needed for discovery in such instances.
@@davis3138 They do, but audio equipment is expensive and relatively delicate. Because of the scale of audio equipment needed, courts opt to get lots of rather cheap pieces of equipment in case any gets damaged in a heated courtroom altercation. so the audio quality on record can range from ok to unusable. Because of that, hard transcripts are usually the go to choice for most lawyers and the courts.
@@davis3138 probably just burocracy. Sometime in the past they probably wrote rules regarding transcript archival that named the medium explicitly so they need to be changed before being able to replace the system
you do realise most courtrooms have already done this right? when i last went to a local court for a civil case, it was just microphones, each case, regardless of how small has to meet the same requirements. Its rather easy, and alot cheaper to just have a microphone in front of each speaker, and have a computer both record the audio and transcribe it automatically and save this data. Audio is a rather low bandwidth file, you can store hours of court room hearings on a simple 1gb USb drive, Let alone the servers which store TB of the stuff.
I'm a federal reporter w/26 yrs experience. I thought this video would be cool, but what a letdown. When I started, I was warned that audio would take over soon. Not gonna happen. Our magistrate judges use recording equipment, but there are so many parts during witness testimony where someone coughs in a microphone, papers shuffled near a microphone, attorneys walk around away from the microphone...well, you get my point. Most don't realize that you learn your writing theory on that crazy looking keyboard within maybe 2 or 3 months. It's getting up to speed that probably 90% of folks get frustrated and quit. And school only teaches you how to do 5 minute takes at certain speeds. It doesn't account for multiple speakers, accents, fast talkers, nervous attorneys butchering the English language, etc. And you're processing this in a split second and have to keep your fingers moving. It's strange because some days I can write perfectly several attorneys cutting each other off w/objections while an expert witness is still testifying, and I think I'm the greatest reporter on the planet. Then the next day, I flub the easiest most basic words I've written a million times. Such is life. Anyway, it's a great career that hardly anyone knows about.
They also do closed captioning for the hearing impaired on television, college classes, doctor appointments, etc. captioning can be VERY challenging because the stenographer has no ability to ask speakers to repeat or slow down, or to control how many people speak at one time. If you know any young person who isn’t sure what they want to do in the future, and they enjoy typing/reading, this is a FANTASTIC profession and is in HUGE demand all over the US.
@@EpicVideos2 Have you seen the autocaptions on videos where the primary speaker has a strong accent? Plus stenographers are able to identify the speaker and pick the right homonym. If courts and live TV suddenly decide that "kinda close enough" will work and silicon valley decides to train speech recognition algorithms on people who don't have American accents, we'd still be 5 years away. And I don't see either of those things happening soon
For anyone curious why court transcripts need to be written instead of simply audio: I’m a law school intern at the district attorneys office and one of my duties is transcribing police interrogation videos for my supervising prosecutor. The reason being that she can quickly glance thru a word document and see what’s important and keep referencing it as she writes out her motions and stuff. On the other hand, audio files suck because you have to listen to the entire thing to know what the hell happened and u obviously can’t just skim thru it to find what u need or see what’s important as easily. Court records will always be written down as opposed to audio files. Additionally, there are microphones in court but sometimes people cough or whatever so it’s not easy to hear, while the court reporter is right there and can ask them to repeat themselves so the written record will be much more accurate.
The 'skimming through the text' is very important and I don't understand why it isn't brought up more. And why it's not mentioned when people argue about just saving the audio files. This applies to everything, not just court cases or the law. Like, if I'm looking for a tutorial on the internet for anything, I will always pick a blog post/website over a video tutorial. Why? Because it's so much faster to pick the relevant information I need and even verify if it actually answers my question. I can go through 10 blogs/websites in the same time it takes me to watch one video tutorial, 20 if the person recording the audio is into rambling. Same with looking for information. Of course there are advantages for audio too, but text is just more convenient and more efficient.
That absolutely makes sense. I'm partially blind so, as I started college in 2009, the only option I knew about was audio books recorded by Learning Ally, known at the time as Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic. I absolutely LOATHED audio books for study because, even in DAISY format with a lot of markers in, it was an absolute pain in the backside to actually look through the dang book and pull out important details for study and such, and I never knew how some crap was spelled unless I looked it up on an actual computer. As an aside, most of the voices on those books were AWEFUL! I understand they were all volunteers, and respect that, but ugh ... Some voices were just not pleasant to listen to, or sometimes hard to understand, and definitely some coughs thrown in, and the narrators often switched randomly. I could only imagine the chaos of listening to an audio recording of a court case. When I finally figured out what I wanted to study in the mid to late 10s, I attended a different school where the books were accessible PDF, MUCH better. What I mean in this rambling is that I can absolutely understand why court records are much better suited to text than audio, especially as they would need referenced a lot and there's a lot that might get lost between the speaker and the mic.
@@seamarie3111 Never even had to rely on audiobooks but I think it'd be absolutely terrible if I had to 'read' my books like that. Audiobooks are, in my opinion, amazing to either: relax with a book you don't need or even wish to retain all the information or to 'preview' a book you might eventually want to read in depth. Almost every book people recommend to me I get in audio and do during chores, walks, etc. and if I really like them, I'll get a physical/kindle copy. And all that is in 2x speed, depending a bit on the narration, or it's just so much slower than reading speed it drives me nuts. Still dislike the inability to quickly take notes or read back. (Kindle highlights alone are amazing for that.) And in the courtroom, at least this way the audio is 'checked' and guided, even if one day voice to text develops to a point it's extremely useful.
Interesting. So, to do something akin to skim-reading you'd need a 'word cloud', but spacially distributed. You'd need an (AI?) filter to read the words conveying most meaning aloud and create a virtual direction from left to right according to the words position on the 'page' you are currently skimming. Or maybe a time distribution would be enough? And the filter could be as simple as reading the lowest frequency words aloud? The problem might be positioning the 'reading head' once a word triggers a desire to read a passage in depth. Maybe just a back arrow to repeat the latest words read aloud? Such a system would require some getting used to, but skim reading have to be learned too. Hmm. That'll go on my list of projects I probably never will finish ;-)
Ordinary civil cases in Germany don’t get a word-by-word protocol though. Every 15 minutes the judge will dictate a short wrapup onto tape and ask all parties if they have objections to said wrapup.
I was a trial lawyer when the only record of courtroom proceedings was made and kept by a stenographer. Their ability to function during hour after hour of sometimes tedious testimony, argument and requests to read back statements was amazing. To me they are the hardest working person in the courtroom. Then, at the end of the day, they may be requested to prepare of transcript of some or all the days testimony. If that isn’t enough, they may be asked to prepare a full transcript of a trial for an appeal. Audio recordings cannot ask someone to speak up, repeat an answer, spell out a scientific word, identify a speaker, etc, etc, etc.... . Sometimes a human cannot be replaced by a machine.
All these things you list at the end are routinely done by whoever operates the audio recorder in official settings. Record now, transcribe later. Best of both worlds. Software can provide a rough live draft to read back from should the need arise.
@@Sobepome worse? How's that any worse? Plus you can have individual mics for people, they are cheap nowadays. Automatic transcription is getting better by the day. Even automatic abstracts are a thing already. And automatic level detection that asks the speaker to speak up.
@@Sobepome Recorded audio in courtrooms isn't just a microphone in the courtroom. I've watched it. It's basically the stenographer speaking into a special mic, so instead of typing everything they are hearing, they are speaking it. But the court recorder is still the one controlling what gets put into the record.
Mad props to stenographers. (Do people still say "mad props?") I went to school to learn court reporting for four and a half years. It is incredibly difficult--I've heard it compared to learning a new language and a new instrument at the same time. I didn't graduate or get certification. I got stuck at 170 WPM for MONTHS and burned out. In my class of twenty-five, only two people didn't drop out by that point. Stenography is hard, but it is vital to the legal system. Also, closed captioning is just as important, if not more so, to make information and shows accessible to hearing impaired.
I am sorry to hear that. I myself have looked into doing this for years now but now realize I don't think I can. I want to burst into tears. I want to do something with my life but don't know what.
I once briefly dated a stenographer I got her to try to show me how to use her machine, it was baffling. The interesting thing is people still have to transcribe the recorded audio into written transcripts, she did this as a side gig. She used a transcription machine plugged into a computer and would play the audio into headphones and use foot pedals to control the playback plus a few other software hotkeys and type on the machine while her computer brought up her output and the translation on a split screen. She was a demon, the audio was playing at close to 2x speed.
There's a growing number of hobbyist stenographers now which might change the way that most people can type since modern mechanical keyboards more than likely have the firmware capability for that. Who knows, might change the entire way you write.
@@avasam06 A stenographer is a person who uses stenography, so I wouldn't want to code on a stenographer. I assume you mean coding with stenography. There are actually people who use stenography for coding, here's a video by someone doing just that: th-cam.com/video/q7g0ml60LGY/w-d-xo.html
I actually ran into a Stenographer last year. She said that many court rooms are recording AND trying to incorporate Human Stenographers because the human ear can detect the conversation better than when the audio cuts out or there is crosstalk and muddies the recording. Hence, she said there is a need for them now more than ever!
@@Fx_Explains There's also the human error factor when things go off record, like the judge near me who switched off the recorder for a conversation then realized it had never been turned back on for months.
@@lxktn1989 everyone saying "the human error" as if that's the end all argument of why we should have it be automated when the clear and more thought out answer is: "typically, the computer-error element is more rampant and misses context that a skilled human in this trade would pick up, so in this scenario a skilled human works better than the computer". Does this make sense for everybody?
@@Oneknee23 Oh I agree with you on the nuance. I'm talking human error of activating recording devices once they're off for private conferences being a negative of the digital devices.
There are dummy heads that perfectly capture the audio like a human would. You can use headphone and listen to it like you were there. The advantages humans still have is the combination of different senses together. You can turn your head towards the one speaking and you can see their lips moving so there still is some better comprehension.
Cicero fled Rome because he could be arrested, and lived in Greece for a while. In that period his slave 'invented' his own handwriting. Later they went back to Rome.
There is a program called Plover to use this on your own personal/work computer and you can buy community made steno keyboards online for a good price (or optimized keycaps for your current normal keyboard). But it’s going to take like half a year to relearn typing with such a keyboard. The plover community is a great start. I wish more people would know about stenography, thanks for making this video.
Do people learn to type? I never learned, I just did it. I'm sure stenography is way more complicated, but at the same time way more useful. I do a lot of meetings and I wish I could take notes at the speed people talk. We tried recording software and voice recognition software but frankly it sucked. You have to train it individually for each person speaking because many people have different accents. Having an unusual accent myself, I found that it garbled maybe 50% of what I said, and it was even worse with the French accents and Chinese accents.
@@garrick3727 yes, they learn. If you try a different typing method it obviously wouldn't work first time, you would write slower than average. This includes everyone, unless you are a machine.
Thanks to openstenoproject and plover, it is actually possible to use steno with an NKRO keyboard on a computer. Also, fun fact: in Chinese, typing the way you speak in slower than typing the way you write because many characters have the same sound. That being said, Chinese stenography is still sound based because that is faster for transcribing speech.
@@elliotw.888 You type the Romanized version (in pinyin) and then select the correct character from a list, usually with the most common/probable one appearing first. That extra step is part of what makes it slower than root/stroke-based methods.
@@EebstertheGreat Yeah. It shows you a list of signs you can pick, and you either just hit space or press the corresponding number at each sign. And if you use a sign more often than another in writing, it'll show more. In traditional Chinese, he/she (Tā) is the same, except in signs (Tā 他 He / Tā 她 She). If you then pick female/male, and write Tā again, it will show that gender as the first option.
I heard a story about how a basketball player (I don’t know who) was talking with the stenographer during a break at a press conference and was amazed at how they could write so many words so quickly. After the break, he started his first answer by saying a lot of obscure words to give the stenographer something interesting to type. I don’t know how true that is, but it’s an interesting story.
@@Thunderstruck170 That’s probably right. My mom works at UW Madison and both my parents graduated from there, so I probably heard it from one of them.
I was a freelance court reporter for 29 years. I went into the field after taking Gregg Shorthand for three years in high school. I enjoyed the mental challenge of both systems.
I never realized that stenographers typed by chording until now. I'm partially blind, so I'm also used to chording, though in a much different way than stenographers use. However, as I grew up writing in Braille, I've always felt like I'm able to type faster in Braille than I can with a standard QUERTY keyboard, though my typing speed's not bad either. It certainly helps when I need to write a lot on my phone and can just enter my iPhone's Braille Screen Input, which is WAY faster for me than the on-screen keyboard. For those who don't know, standard Grade 2 Braille has a lot of shorthand in it, like one cord for the words and, the, as, of, the, etc, as well as a lot of contractions within words. While physical Braille takes up a lot more space than print, it's pretty interesting when I think about just how much shorthand there is. To be honest, sometimes when I'm spelling things, I kind of have to translate OUT of the Braille contraction in my head, if that makes sense. I find it amazing that stenographers can learn to type by syllables alone.
@@cwctlh Ah, the good ol' Perkins ... I've had mine over 25 years, since Kindergarten. That metal beast got a LOT of use! I'll always keep it, even if I don't use it very often. It's so well-made compared to the plastic ones I've seen today, which I can't stand.
@@cwctlh LOL, got that right! Mine's been serviced only once in 25 years, and it still works almost perfectly, aside from the enter key not functioning properly. I guess I should try to get it serviced, but I'm not sure the cost, and don't want anyone messing it up. Technology is amazing, and I use it so much, but nothing quite beats nice, crisp Braille on a page. I need to order some books from the NLS, I've not done that in ages, since before the pandemic. I am lucky enough to have a Braille display, but even that just isn't the same as reading books on paper. Sorry, off-topic rant over! As fast as I feel I'm able to type in Braille, I still find it amazing that stenographers can approach 300WPM. That's just amazing!
It's not a rant at all, and it's a pleasure to have someone to discuss Braille, technology, and everything else in the visual disabilities world. I graduated from college in 1974 (not a typo, lol). I ended up teaching kids with severe physical and intellectual disabilities so I didn't use a lot of what I learned, but I've tried to at least have some idea of what's going on in the field. I love thumbing through every new issue of the Printing House catalog. It's fascinating to see what's new, what already existed when I was in college, and everything in between. One of my annual rituals is ordering a new Braille/large print wall calendar for the coming year. I graduated from Florida State. When I arrived in 1970, there was a buzzer on a busy campus crosswalk to indicate that it's (allegedly) safe to cross. The visual disabilities professors and the Blind Services counselor hated it because the blind and partially sighted students depended on it instead of their hearing. The buzzer is still there and operational! Now the fully sighted students use it to know when to cross the street without looking up from their phones, lol. The visual disabilities program there, which still exists, was very small. I felt like I was a member of an exclusive club that knew a secret code.
today someone commented i should delete all videos :( people can be so mean. but i dont care. i know im the best. i never give up. i am age 80+ and will never stop. thanks for caring, dear sas
Way back when, my mom did the typing of the transcript as she played back the audio recording the stenographer had created of the deposition. We helped by creating her paper pile. That is, if the court reporting company said they needed an original and 2 copies, we took 3 sheets of typewriter paper and layer a sheet of carbon paper between them. Think of the set as a double-beef hamburger where the beef is the carbon and the buns are the paper. My mom was paid per set. When I was in college and looking for a part-time job she suggested asking at the company to see if they had any messenger jobs available. They didn't but they pointed me to another one. The next thing I knew I was photocopying the single pages and making the sets needed and then delivering them to the lawyers in Manhattan. (This company had in-house typists that read the stenograph paper and typed the pages). Got to learn the subway that way.
Good job explaining how a court reporter does their job. The shortcuts to which you refer are called “brief forms,” and court reporters create them prior to the deposition or on the fly for certain high-frequency words specific to that particular deposition. As of 2022, audio recording still has a long way to go before it can compete with a human. Court reporters who are proficient with the machine and understand the shorthand system can go one step further, writing conflict-free in real time. This means that as they are speaking, the attorney’s words are coming up on their computer monitor nearly instantaneously and fully translated (e.g., readable). Conflicts are words such as “meet” and “meat,” which sound the same but have different meanings. I’ve been married to a court reporter for 30+ years and it still seems like magic to me. Cheers!
Im a newly graduated stenographer, our profession has constantly faced the argument that AI will replace us. They’ve said this for as long as computers existed and guess what, it still hasn’t replaced us. Our skill and ability will always be better than what AI can do. When you watch the news and see “there’s a tomato coming” instead of “there’s a tornado coming,” know that if a stenographer were captioning, you would go to the basement and not the garden. Edit: to all the people saying AI will take my profession away, it won’t. There is a system in place that advocates for humans to be in the room writing the record, writing a class for a hard of hearing individual, or captioning a broadcast. The only reason any type of digital reporting is used is due to a lack of reporters available. So I’m done trying to convince people I’ll have a career for life. I know I will and everyone should be advocating for human beings having jobs and not fighting that AI will be better and take over.
I think AI can surpass humans eventually but we're making comparisons to the AI we have now which is seriously not that advanced at all and progress in that area isn't as fast as people think.
@@leadpaintchips9461 By that reasoning, humans should be able to work metal into desired shape better than a cnc machine. Which is why when the cnc machine came out, it fizzled out because it couldn't keep up with the skill of humans. Oh wait.
This is one of those things that would be really hard to learn at first, having to remember what keys mean what and what order to press them in, etc. but I'm sure you would get exponentially better at it once you finally know what you're supposed to do
Stenographer in training here. A big reason why stenographers aren’t afraid of technology is they are unable to differentiate between basic words let alone any nuance. Lets say for example somebody is trying to say three but they pronounce it as tree, a computer would still mess up where the human would be able to write it down correctly. Similarly if someone were to be asked if they killed a man and respond with “I did?” The computer would just pick up “you killed a man” “I did” so it’s pretty clear to see how that couldn’t work. Entire court cases have been thrown out because of this costing the courts tons of money. Edit: let me also add that if stenographers were replaced by AI, black and other racial minorities would be greatly hurt as the AI are largely modeled off of accents found more commonly in white communities.
@@nstrug source? I’m almost certain you are full of shit because as far as I know machine shorthand never made it’s way from the us to the uk because the accents change how you write drastically. From what I know, the uk is still mostly analog using pen and paper. Still possible but much slower.
Cicero's Wisdom "To live is to think." "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others." "Never injure a friend, even in jest." "Nothing dries sooner than a tear." "Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself." "The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil." "I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity." "An unjust peace is better than a just war." "The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct." "The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust." "The safety of the people shall be the highest law." "Silence is one of the great arts of conversation." "Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error." "The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk." "I love slavery soooo much. Slavery is cool and good. Are you writing this down, slave? Did you get the part about how slavery is cool and good? No, no, you're right, that doesn't really sound like one of my quotes. How about, like, 'Slavery is the bedfellow of tranquil pleasures.' Yeah, hell yeah, I love that. Write that down."
It's like knitting. My wife even tried to teach me, but apparently I'm not psychic enough to commune with the evil spirits who enable that black magic.
I've worked with several Stenographers, though we just call them Court Reporters. The best of which could do real-time. Many court reporters actually do what they can in court and then just record it all so they can go back and clean up their "copy". The software on their computers actually links the audio recording to the section it corresponds to in text record. So if they look through it at the end of the day and see some gibberish where they mistyped, they can highlight the section and hit play, and it will play back the audio allowing them to fix what they've written. Real-time certified reporters are so good that they have less than a certain percentage of errors over time, and typically will provide the ability for Attorneys (at a cost) to see the live transcribed text, and of course often provided to the court as well as part of the contract or for free if they're court employees. Also, if it's a trial or big deal hearing, they can have people "scoping" for them off-site. Where a copy of their transcript is synced over the cloud to someone else's computer and is cleaned up and synced back essentially. So if someone is looking at the transcript in real time in the courtroom and they scroll back up a few minutes later, what might have been gibberish before will now be properly filled in. This is both to provide a good real-time service, but also to cut down on work after hours when the parties inevitably request daily copies from the reporter. If the copy has already been scoped it's more a "quick" read through checking for errors, and then sending it off. Where I work most reporters are employed by the court and receive a salary, and also get paid by the parties when requesting various transcripts and services such as real-time during the event. I think one of the largest challenges for reporting to transition to AI will be the attribution to speakers, and accuracy. These will get better the longer the hearing, or if the system allowed for building voice models for various attorneys that are loaded in each time and improved over time, it could get insanely accurate. This plus hiring transcribers to clean up the transcript after the fact will one day replace court reporters, but when, I don't know.
To be clear, ya'll: when you call 911, the operators have a minimum typing score of 120 wpm. That's with zero errors, of course. My mom worked for the VAPD for 14 years and got over 150wpm. I'm a computer nerd who, before voice chat, communicated mid-game entirely via keyboard. At my height I probably reached roughly 100 wpm, with at least one error. 300 wpm. That's absolutely insane.
Friend of mine was in the same situation (no mic), averages 120 (in German) with 3 fingers using caps lock, which is quite amazing to me (10f - 60wpm).
Even a keyboarding speed of 40 words per minute can be faster than writing in script form with ink and paper. All it takes is to tap keystrokes accurately without errors made.
Obligatory 911 operator here and that is just not true. Minimum to apply for my job is something pitiful like 45. I'm one of the fastest on the floor of hundreds of employees at about 115 peak with errors, 100 corrected wpm. Most call taking is done with scripted software that gets mostly multiple choice answers with a few instances of needing to type names and addresses.
Recorded audio has some serious disadvantages as a primary record in many use cases, though it can be fine as a backup or supplementary record. Those disadvantages are likely disappearing as technology advances, but given how far court budgets lag the rest of the world, it will be a long time until steno isn't a common practice.
You’re right in some aspects. I think a ton of money goes into audio though. I have seen very expensive systems. They still don’t work that well compared to a live contemporaneous record.
There’s also the issue of a Judge wanting a read back of something from earlier in the hearing. Plus, the recording has to be transcribed at some point anyway. Some lesser court hearings are going to digital reporters, which is having a recording instead of a stenographer, but there’s still someone in the room who will, if need be, transcribe the hearing transcript after the fact. TLDR; Court Reporters aren’t going anywhere.
Also, there is the fact that these are legal records and require a human to swear to their authenticity. In fact, stenographers are also notaries and are thus considered court officials. An AI transcription could never be trusted to be an official record unless a human has reviewed it word for word. AI makes mistakes. MAYBE one day the technology will be there, it's just not there yet.
Imma ask something why they don't just buy the audio equipment with the money that will be given to the stenographer it will be more efficient and cheap overtime
My mother learned Steno ("the deutsche Einheitskurzschrift", "german unified stenography") in the 50's in school and worked as a secretary for a manager of a big company until her marriage. She never lost her ability to write in DEK by hand (de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Einheitskurzschrift) for typewriting until she died.
Stenographers are still extremely useful in courtroom. Judges and lawyers don't want to listen again to a whole audio recording of a hearing if we can just ctrl+F our way out of it.
@@tongraymondtong6693 the phone I’m using to type this out on as well as most phones have the technology needed to do that without a person It’s that little microphone that lets u talk to type lol
@@alicemirga2435 talk to type can't pick up or tell apart homonyms, interruptions, coughs, stutters, speakers, etc. Stenographers are superior because of that.
I think even if you switched to audio recording, stenographers would still be needed! The transcript eventually has to be converted into a paper document, and AI just can't do it. So you'd need to have someone transcribe the audio recording. And the best people to do that would be Stenographers who can write it out without needing to go back in the recording over and over. So at that point, you might as well just pay the stenographers to be in the courtroom doing it live with all the context, facial cues, body language, and no chances of audio being corrupted or improperly recorded.
That's the key part - audio clarity. Normal people tend to mumble and agitated people (common in court) tend to talk over each other. Stenographer is authorized by the court to tell these people to speak up, repeat themselves, or to STFU and let the other party talk.
Agreed that stenographers are still necessary. Something I don't understand, though, is why people who want to use audio recordings don't ever (not that I've heard) bring up just doing multiple recordings? A mic for the judge, one for the witness stand, etc. A computer can't "understand" the interaction the way a stenographer can, but it can keep the recordings aligned by time. Would solve the problem of people talking over each other--the computer could play all recordings simultaneously to recreate how it sounded in the court room, or could play back individual tracks.
@@zoyadulzura7490 My understanding is many courts don't record audio for privacy reasons, not technical reasons. In fact, many courts don't even allow any devices in the courtroom capable of recording. It's to protect the identities of witnesses, jury members, etc.
@zoyadulzura7490 I'm a former transcriber in Australia and that's what we do. Each courtroom has multiple mics: Bench, witness box, and two on the Bar. There's often also cameras. Important proceedings are livestreamed to a team of transcribers, who can return a complete transcript in just a few hours. Lower priority matters are recorded and the file is sent to contractors who type it up and sent it back in a few days or weeks. It's true that AI can't replace what transcribers do, but it doesnt need to because this system works quite well.
@@yesusisyeemo Well the EcoSteno and Uni are both being semi-mass produced and are about $100 each. It'd be nice if it was even cheaper, but I think it'll be hard to do with the current costs of mechanical keyboard switches and all that.
@@ShawnFumo that is true though I feel as if mass production may allow them to be cheaper. this'll only be possible if the community grows from a niche to something worth mass producing products for
A lot of Hospitals and Doctors are moving away from transcription and into voice recognition and it's actually been a disaster. The transcriptionists have to go back into the documents and re-write everything anyway because they're so bad
My X was a medical transcriptionist for 22 years before Voice Recognition software put him out of a job, a couple jobs actually. Only a tiny handful of doctors at my hospital use a transcriptionist simply because of the heavy accents.
@Alex Daniel's drumming vids. my mother has been a medical transcriptionist since the 80s, and I can tell you that I am not mistaken. None of the 5-6 hospitals around here can depend on voice recognition and every single one of them uses transcriptionists to redo almost every single one of them
I worked as a registrar (clerk) in Superior Court. The real-time steno setups were impressive. The reporters (stenos) made fortunes on big trials doing real-time and daily (sometimes twice daily) transcriptions.
Audio is currently rubbish for legal records. I’ve headed numerous PACE interviews, which are digitally recorded. What an utter nightmare to try is find distinguishable distinction’s when listening back. For example, a mumbled reply, which to one person is more audible than others, translating accents, speech impediment’s into a sensitive mic, two voices that are very closely related may be difficult to distinguish. You cannot go back to that date and time and say, “oh, repeat that sentence please” if it’s not clear. It may be a minor as a background rustle that can distort the sound, and that particular word is lost. In court, presenting the spoken word, for example in evidence, the stenographer may interrupt and ask for the word to be repeated. The digital recorder is no where near intelligent enough to send an audible signal to alert the speaker to repeat the word, not yet anyway. Stenography is an art, not only of recording, but listening. Why change something if it ain’t broken. Changes for change sake, and typically modern, resource hungry thinking, yeah let’s use more resources to make equipment that can break down and cost a fortune, then employ some poor soul to check the recording against the audio, plus when it needs an upgrade (as its no longer supported or it’s not reliable ), let’s buy another one and keep swallowing up resources, and your left with a load of junk that’s only 65% recyclable. People are pretty cost effective, they have a place in the world, and I know the stenographer is here to stay for a long time yet, thank goodness! Your much better than some polluting, plastic box, full of resource hungry parts, travelling half way around the world on a container ship, onto a truck, into a van, all guzzling diesel and polluting the planet! 🤷♀️🤦♀️
My mother is a stenographer. Stenographers do a lot more than was discussed. Imagine not only typing everything that was said, but also discerning true words from "uh" and "um", labeling exactly who is saying what, dealing with people talking over each other, having to keep pace with a volatile conversation, having to remember any word on a dime, managing your own dictionary, etc. Furthermore, the claim that this video "won't be relevant" in the future is completely unsubstantiated. Not only is a recording useless without an official LEGAL record, a computer cannot make a judgement call like a human can; a computer can't judge on the spot which word was just spoken based on context, tone, subject, and other factors. This whole video sounds like a trivializing of this profession and it is shameful.
While you are right about this video trivialising the amazing work of stenographers, you are also wildly underestimating the progress of ai. However technological progress is often far faster than beurocracy...
I work at a court in Brazil. In 2010, I was required to have a typing test in order to get the job. But I have worked at hearings for many years since and never needed to type fast, because we record them in audio and video. It's just a little hard for the workers that write decisions, because it'd be faster for them if they got a text instead of a video.
I used to average 90 on type racer in school. My record was 130, but I could never repeat that feat. Meanwhile my opponents shift it into fifth and seemingly effortlessly go 180-220.
Court reporters aren't going away no matter how much techbros want them to, and every time they try to argue for AI they reveal how little they understand about the process for producing and protecting a record and how courts actually function in a day to day sense. Also money seems to be no object, it would be insanely more expensive just to run even their idealized dream setup.
My grandpa was a judge. And his stenographer taught me to type and read steno when I was little even before I learned to type on QWERTY. It honestly made it harder to learn when I started using the Apple II’s in third grade.
in Poland we use normal keyboard stenotypist (qwerty). (btw: Polish language words are writed as it's spelled). Court trial use to take long becouse they usually dictate clearly what is to be writed down to protocol. There are project for system of recording the trial, but there are lots of problems with developing it (from objections of judges to equipment failure and regulation of access to recordings).
@@grubbygeorge2117 Good question. Probably its like coding - this solution is enought for English - easy and by that popular. In the group of the most popular 6,000 words in English, the overwhelming majority are one- and two-syllables. In Polish, the words are longer and there are more sounds (and letters in the alphabet), and there are consonant clusters (like in other Slavic languages, sounds quite tough and rustles). We need less words to explain something, but that words are more complicated. Different word-endings gives them a precise meaning. There are notability in usage of each ending letters. And writing by latin letters as it sounds, plays a servant role. It may seem that in Polish we speak faster, but globally the amount of information per minute in all languages is similar (limited by brain buffor or transfer). Generally this specificity (richness of sounds) makes Polish difficult to create a simplified device to write faster. Same as our speech apparatus must catch up with its faculties to produce all these sounds. Stenography keybord would require more key combinations. It turns out that no one appreciates this as worth the effort to construct, compared to adapting existing solutions. There was a manual shorthand record in Poland, but it was not mechanized and is currently not popular (it was used by doctors and journalists among others). Probably Germans have the same issue- their words seems like clumps of words to give them specific usage/meaning.
I had a professor in college who was very hard of hearing and the university provided a stenographer with the equipment and a laptop to transcribe any questions that students had during the lecture.
I went to school for stenography. I got up to around 240. Unfortunately the school was very poorly run and they essentially just took the majority of the students money without providing teachers that had the proper knowledge to instruct and dictate to us. Besides that, it’s been nearly 20 years since I was in school for it and I still hear the way that people speak in phonetics. I can also picture/feel out the keystrokes of conversations that I’m hearing, including the shortcuts that we used for common phrases. If you know you know - you never forget!
Effectively speaking, this is essentially learning a whole other language, then drilling it into your brain enough that you can translate on reflex into hand movements as fast as people are talking.
Kind of, though it isn't anywhere near as involved as a full language. You need to absorb various rules and built muscle memory, but you're still producing normal English in the end. I've only been at it a couple of months and can already write most stuff. And I think most people could get to over 100wpm in a year. The really difficult thing is actually getting up to consistent 225wpm to graduate. But I'm just doing it myself on my computer with open source software and a cheap hobbyist keyboard, so I don't have to worry about that if I don't want to.
I've always found it spooky that stenographers stop typing the moment the person stops talking. You'd think there'd be a tiny bit of a delay. I wish I'd learned manual shorthand in high school. I was terrible at taking notes in college because I have ADHD and a bit of OCD, so would constantly hesitate over which words to write and how to write them. By the time I wrote down one item the professor would have covered several more. Couldn't take the typing and shorthand course in high school - it was a "girl's course." Not closed to boys, but virtually none took it. (1970s) Plus, it didn't use the academic part of the brain so I might not get an A, which would screw up my GPA for college. I considered taking the course but couldn't afford the hit to getting into top choice colleges or to scholarships.
@@tappajaav Went to the top university in my state system (NY). Applied to only a couple of private schools, was afraid of the tuition and *non-tuition costs,* and so was my family, so never really investigated scholarships. Was a disappointment to my guidance counselor, I was her only student ever who had a real shot at getting into Harvard, but I wouldn't even apply. (SAT scores were really good, aside from a great GPA). Ultimately none of it really mattered since I had ADHD, which was unknown at the time, and didn't know how to cope with it. Plus another personal problem (no, not drugs). So I dropped out twice and never graduated. Serendipity kicked in, though. An extracurricular activity turned into a career. There was a student run ambulance service, and a couple of years later I became a NYC paramedic. It was a rewarding career - immediately rewarding, day by day, which most careers don't provide. Never would have ended up with it if I'd gone to Harvard. :)
As someone who does transcription and captioning of recorded audio and video, yeah no, stenographers are needed and hella impressive. I couldn't do it. AI is nowhere near what you think it is, humans are always having to go in and correct it. And do you know how many recordings sound like they've been made on a potato at the bottom of a lake in the next county over? There are countless reasons why especially in a courtroom, recordings won't replace stenographers anytime soon
My mom learnt Stenography and Pitmans Shorthand in Ghana Sectretarial Schools. 1965-1966. She was the first stenographer and qualified secretary in Southern Africa.
Imagine getting into an online argument with a stenographer (especially since these days one can configure their keyboard or make a custom keyboard to act like a stenograph).
@@MrMoon-hy6pn Still gotta wait for the person to take theirs so you're not really saving any time. Just like you had to wait 2 days for me to take mine.
Quick heads up, but we don't really use the term Stenograph to refer to the keyboard, as that's the name of the company that made the first one. The generic term nowadays is just "Steno Machine" because other companies make them as well.
@@kathytoy5055 It’s never called stenotypy in my country. I’ve noticed it differs between countries, with overlap between the USA and Canada. We call it stenography.
@@elizabethhgrace Yeah, I'm being a stickler. TECHNICALLY, etc. Because I'm a court reporter, see? By the way, when I started 30 years ago, people were saying all the same things that are seen in the comments here and the errors in the video, so there's that.
Great video! I'd also like to point out that voice writing, an alternative method to machine shorthand, is gaining a lot of ground in the court reporting and captioning field. It requires the reporter to repeat what they're hearing into a microphone while speech recognition software tailored to the reporter's voice converts it to legible text. The reporter or captioner also includes special punctuation and formatting commands such as speaker labels into their dictation to ensure transcript accuracy. Like machine shorthand, this comes with its own set of challenges as well, and it can take several months and even years to master. Cheers to all the guardians of the record!
I love that old TV/film footage at 4:01 - the actress clearly has no idea how to use the keyboard properly and is just flailing around, the steno version of q;sldkfjqw;flkjqw;elkfjqw;ldkfgj.
I think that this would be a good skill to learn because even though I'll probably never use it in a court room, because it's certainly faster than journaling. Typing is fast to write down my thoughts but sometimes I just think too fast or make a spelling error that I have to fix or mess up in some other way and I forget what I'm talking about entirely. Sometimes I write and then fill in words later on so I can write as fast as I think but it gets messy at times. That's why it'd be great to learn this!
are you guys serious? there are transcription functions in most text processing apps (Word for instance). Just turn it on and speak into your microphone... only reason to use a stenographer is because a human can intelligently listen and filter out who is speaking and only write down the important things with more accuracy and accountability. You probably need a sophisticated array of microphones + artificial intelligence to fully automate & replace stenographers
@@TheRedstonePlayerMC Do you talk the same way you write? Do you like talking out loud to yourself for extended periods of time? Are you even in a setting where you can talk out loud? News flash: different people... do things differently.
@@TheRedstonePlayerMC i've tried those things. Even when i tried to speak clearly and with the right mic position, it still messes up words often enough that typing on my thumb is faster. And it also only support English.
Time and time again over decades stenographers have proven their superiority when compared to audio recording and speech to text. There is no substitute for accuracy, speed, and cost than a human stenographer
I went to court reporting school and I am a captioner now. I love my job! If you’re good at linguistics and english it’s a great field. Plus, more demand = more $ :)
Stenography was one of those things I accidentally learned about when I misspelled the word 'steganography' when researching something for school. I went down one hell of a rabbit hole and managed to learn it well enough to type about 20wpm with my normal keyboard and some special software in about a week. Can't remember any of it now though
I have a friend training to be a stenographer and they've specifically said that human stenographers almost certainly won't become irrelevant with audio recording- the will probably used as WELL AS stenographers for redundancy - audio files can get corrupted or lost, etc
I really enjoyed the joke about how reading can help improve your attention span and then talking about wanting to get back into "reading" by listening to books while doing other things. Classic!
While stenography may be waning in relevance in the court room, they're as important as ever when it comes to live broadcasting. Automatic speech recognition will simply never be as accurate as a human being typing what they're hearing. It struggles with identifying speakers and also struggles when there's a lot of back and forth between multiple people. For that reason, stenography will always have a place in the world, specifically in broadcasting.
I worked as a word processor in the 1980s and, to keep from going brain dead, invented my own short forms and a replacement macro to convert them to text. It was a lot of fun to develop and troubleshoot.
I never knew steno could be written on keybords. In my grandparents generation they just write this stuff by hand, my grandma even being kind of professional in her time.
I did medical transcription for 25 years, and I could transcribe 90 words per minute. I could take dictation off of a Dictaphone or a related system, and I used shortcut software, e.g. I could type "EGD" and the software would spell out "esophagogastroduodenoscopy." I could transcribe 15 minutes of dictation per hour of typing, which meant that the doctor who handed me a tape with 50 minutes of dictation on it and told me she needed it in 10 minutes was out of luck, and I also discovered early on that most doctors couldn't spell, so it was up to me to know how to spell the medical terminology. I enjoyed the job, but, alas, I've been replaced by voice-recognition software, which as of yet isn't sensitive enough to do a really good job transcribing speech, e.g. I have seen some things in medical records that are truly mind-boggling.
My grandfather worked as a stenographer in a company in my hometown and retired 15 years ago. My dad joined the country's highways as a stenographer too and he's currently a secratary in an University. He always worships the shorthand book everyday. If I ask why, he says "That's the book that gave me a life. I'll never forget it"
That is pretty cool, when someone can recognize ONE event, picture, person, book, film, speech, statement, or thought as one most critical in their existence. The closest I can come to that is "I know which side my bread is buttered on.", when I think of how important my family was in my childhood, and my life as it turned out. A statement that reminds me of what is truly important in life!
To me, stenographers are the stars of the courtroom. Every time I am in one (for whatever reason) I always zone in on them. I wonder to myself 'how in the world are they able to type everything so fast' ...now I know
My mom knows shorthand, she writes instead of typing what is being spoken & after once it's completed she then translates it back to English & simultaneously types it.
honestly home-row is just the easiest way to learn how to touch-type. if you can touch-type without it, then you're fine, but I suspect you're still regularly glancing at the keyboard. i suspect that because that used to be me. I used to type 70+ wpm without using home row and thought I didn't need it, but when I got older i sat down and forced myself to learn home row typing properly, and my average jumped to 90~100 wpm and I can touch-type blindfolded with very few errors per minute at those speeds. i can even feel most errors as i type them and backspace to correct without looking at the keyboard _or_ the screen. so you might think you're doing fine without learning "proper" typing technique, but if you still need to look at the keyboard for normal typing (like, ever, at all), then imagine how much more powerful you _could_ be if you took the time to learn proper touch-typing technique.
@@TheGuindo thanks, ive always hated home row since my typing teacher always said "no your not doing it the RIGHT WAY" and it just pissed me off since there is no right or wrong way to type imo
@@lmaoeyisdead well, there are certainly _wrong_ ways to type, but you're right that the home row method they teach you in typing class isn't the _only_ correct way. if you wanna _really_ fuck with your teacher, go into the Windows language settings and change the keyboard layout to Dvorak right before you leave class. I use a Dvorak layout and I always get a kick out of how much it confuses people when they try to use my computer at work.
In my experience, at least in depositions, stenographers will record testimony just to be sure what they've transcribed is correct. Deposition witnesses are also provided transcripts of their testimony to review and correct. But even with all that, many stenographers do an amazing job.
I have never heard of a witness being allowed to "correct" a transcript. They're not exactly a neutral party. The record is the record. And stenographers will records, because why wouldn't you? Low effort and when it pays off it pays off huge. People talk over each other, interrupt, spill coffee on your lap. It only makes sense. That said, the audio is never going to be as good as hearing it the first time, so when the audio isn't clear but your notes are, you trust the notes 10 times out of 10.
@@brasssnacks8413 I only practiced for a few years but I did take a bunch of depositions. I don't recall ever sending a transcript for a witness to review. That may be because I never represented a witness in a deposition. But I've been deposed twice. Once as a college student I was a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit arguing having to pay a mandatory fee to NYPIRG was unconstituional. Many years later I was a plaintiff in a personal injury suit in a NY State court. I had been rear-ended by a garbage truck while I was stopped at red light totalling my car and messing up my back. On both occasions, my lawyer sent me copies of my depositions to review for accuracy. Even the best stenographer could make a mistake. No one is perfect. But if a witness made an admission in a deposition, but "corrected" it by deleting that admission it would become a question of fact for either the judge or jury to determine what had been said in the deposition. The stenographer could testify and any recordings could be entered as evidence.
It really still helps to have that human filter in the room, to make sure people speak one at a time, to know who says what and who accounts for stutters or rambling
My Mom just finished Stenographer/Court Reporter school, I would ask her about this kind of stuff and I always found it interesting when she would tell me, she’s finally a Court Reporter and has just started work, 4 years of Online School and she’s finally done, I’m so proud of her.
For anyone going "Voice recognition could easily automate this job", it can't, and here's why: 1. Stenographers can correctly transcribe people who speak with accents that aren't American. Until Silicon Valley starts caring about diversity, I don't thing computers will be able to do that. 2. Stenographers can distinguish individual speakers. 3. Stenographers can pick the right homonym. Without understanding the meaning of the words, a computer cannot distinguish homonyms. Maybe GPT-3 could do it, but it would be hard. Technical jargon and puns could make this extra difficult. 4. Stenographers can type with 99.8% accuracy. Even when voice recognition can do the other stuff, it'll take years before it can do it with sufficient reliability that courts and TV broadcasts would be willing to switch to it. I'm sure it'll be automated eventually, but probably not anytime too soon
"Until Silicon Valley starts caring about diversity" Yeah not like the Valley is basically infested with ultra left wing liberal computer majors and college dropouts on top of already way above average minority hiring quotas and a diversity agenda they push in pretty much every possible media channel they own. Like, are you living under a Dwayne Johnson? Do yourself a favor and read up on the mindset of the tech corporations and their owners in Silicon Valley.
All 4 problems are easily solved by giving everybody a decent quality microphone. You could even use a system which keeps the different audio tracks isolated so in latter review you can mute everybody except whoever you want to listen to, or change their relative volume. Audio files arn't big so you could store backups of loads of them really easily. You also capture everything about the speech and not just the words themselves On top of that if you REALLY want it transcribed, you can just transcribe it latter without worrying about taking time out of the actual proceedings. And if you let an automatic system transcribe the audio THEN go over it manually like you can with TH-cam it could probably be done a lot faster. Pure auto-transcription is a bad idea, but even a decent quality mic is going to be cheaper then a single paycheck for a stenographer. You could probably pay for the labor to build such a system in a month's wages but even if it's a years you've replaced a running cost with an upfront cost and will save so much money long term
Also, to those who just say to store the audio: - reading transcribed text is faster than listening to audio especially considering you might want to navigate over the text (read some parts multiple times, skip others) and - transcribed text is much easier to archive than some audio format which won’t be supported by anything in 50 years.
That is extremely fascinating!! I didn't quite get the abbreviated words until I thought of them through animation terms. In 2D hand drawn animation (12-24 individual drawings per 1 second of film/audio) ya kinda breakdown dialogue tracks by sounding out what the words sound like and not how they are spelled. Like that you get how a character's mouth shapes should be since for realism it doesn't translate perfectly (plus there's a 2 frame delay before the sound usually). So "actually" could end up as "auctooallyyyyy" if thats how the voice actor said it. The audience here's "actually", the animator simplifies the sounds to make it easier. If ya animated each sound the mouth would be going completely all over the place
![PASULOL รามเกียรติ์ ตอนที่ 4 นนทกพบรัก [Ramakien Ep.4: Nonthok in love]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUQgmZzf_A/mqdefault.jpg)
Stenographers do more than just type what people say, they also have to identify the speaker which includes asking people to speak louder, stop talking over one another, and repeat or spell words that could be misunderstood. This is why California's push for automated/computer stenographers failed so spectacularly.
th-cam.com/video/YThNnGgZqcc/w-d-xo.html Top 10 floppa.
That's interesting. I wonder if a good multi microphone setup could resolve a lot of those issues. AI is quite capable of separating out speakers these days even if they talk over each other even on a single microphone but with multiple sources it's surprisingly good.
Hah
@@thewisefool4049 Aye, this is a relatively trivial problem to solve for anyone with the proper budget. The original comment is actually a list of reasons why we should get rid of the human element. The only reason the stenographer has to do all of the things the OP said is because they're a fallible human.
@@Kittoes0124 I work in that exact field and I can tell you that speaker diarization is far from being trivial, it's even more complicated than speech recognition, which is far from perfect on non-ideal audio (such as in a court room).
My mum was a stenographer, she still has the stenograph from her time in Hansard. I tried to learn, but couldn't wrap my head around it, it's crazy impressive. She says that during conversations, her brain will translate the words into steno.
Well, this is kinda how it works. With any action really. It's a device. A tool. I guess, what your mom was saying, she didn't have to deliberately think about particular sylab or part of the word, being aware of the process 100% of time, and that's more like "muscle memory". Riding a bike or something, you don't think what you're doing exactly when turning for example, you're just doing it. Which translates to some specific action. (As a matter of fact, to turn the bike right, what we are really doing is turning the steering left. Sound pretty idiotic at first.)
@@override7486 _Pushing_ the steering left, but it turns right.
I was a pretty talented musician when I was younger and I still almost unconsciously figure out the chord changes in songs I hear and compose the melody and harmonies in my head. When you’re trained to do something at a subconscious level, you can never just unlearn it.
When i was younger i could type between 140-160 wpm on a qwerty and the typing training program had you type from books and speech. I also notice that sometimes my fingers will twitch in the positions of words i and others say. Also if you have spent 30 years on the internet communicating (mostly the parts back in the beginning) you can have a conversation in text as fast as you can with speech. (Until carpal tunnel ruins your day from using non ergonomic keyboards your whole life). But the stenograph is as alien to me as hieroglyphics
i heard it took somewhere around 10-ish years to fully master the stenograph
The best stenographers can transcribe several speakers simultaneously. If you've ever seen one in a courtroom, it is impressive.
Well, it's sort of their job to transcribe what everyone is saying, I'm pretty sure most if not all court reporters can do that. But I agree it's very impressive
Why cant they just have multiple stenographers? one for every person who talks the most
@@mastershooter64 Stenographers are expensive.
Wow, mr brain turns off if someone talks to me as im on the phone.
@@mastershooter64 sounds expensive
My father was a career Court Reporter, a “CSR” actually which is a “Certified Shorthand Reporter”. The good money was when a legal team ordered a “daily”, which is a typed, record in english of the day’s proceedings which had to be dictated after hours, and delivered to the typist for final typing. Dictation involved reading those stenograph notes from the narrow accordian folded paper from his stenograph “steno” into a special tape recorder (Dictograph) and giving the typist the tape recording from which to type from. When he was involved in a daily, we didnt see him till weekends, but he was always in a great mood for the substantial extra dough he earned from this out of the norm service to the legal teams. Interesting video….
My mom has been a stenographer or court reporter for 30 years now. When she started, the teacher warned the class it was a dying industry. 30 years later and the industry is full of middle to late age women who are making absolute bank because no one is coming in to continue the profession. I would say it’s sad, but my mom and her fellow group of 50 year old court reporters would disagree. More money for them. 😂
Got a friend who's been a stenographer for over 20 years. She makes insane money and has good job security but it can be a stressful job too.
Steno has been very difficult to get started in, but thanks to Plover and Open steno community it's been made more accessible to anyone who wants to learn. You can actually learn for free right now with Plover and resources like Typey Type and art of chording.
@@tncorgi92 A lot of job security and overtime available in turning the steno to text. There are little differences between different people in steno after years of doing it.
the stories that stenographers could tell about what they hear and see going down in a courtroom would be wild.
@Get on the cross and don’t look back DAFUQ?
if anyone is looking for a way to dip their feet in steno without buying anything I highly recommend Plover, it's free & open source and makes your keyboard work like a steno machine
Thank you for your support kind sir
Kurwa, nie spodziewałem sie
Plover lover
Plover is also a type of bird in Australia that looks like a magpie but is extremely aggressive during breeding season and has tiny poisonous claws on its wingtips that it tries to scratch you with as it endlessly dive bombs intruders within its mile wide radius of protection.
It inspired the brand No Fear which has eyes on the reverse side of its products because people thought they would be more wary of cartoon eyes on the back of hats since they blindside cyclists and pedestrians endlessly.
Plover season is scarier than the usual snakes, spiders etc tourists think they have to worry about
@@darylingoteborg3178 Masked Lapwing is probably the specific plover you’re referring to
Im a janitor in a courthouse and have spoken with Stenogrophers here about their machines and their uses. And they wont be replaced by audio recordings anytime soon because the courts legally keep all copies from the stenograph and its translation into words. Those are legal documents and cant be destroyed or altered and have to be used in case of retrials, appeals and other such court operations and have to be kept on record for any lawyers to come and request a copy in case they are needed for discovery in such instances.
So why can’t the court just legally keep the audio recordings, like it does with audio transcriptions
@@davis3138 They do, but audio equipment is expensive and relatively delicate. Because of the scale of audio equipment needed, courts opt to get lots of rather cheap pieces of equipment in case any gets damaged in a heated courtroom altercation. so the audio quality on record can range from ok to unusable. Because of that, hard transcripts are usually the go to choice for most lawyers and the courts.
Yeah why don't they just keep the mp3 on a freakin hard drive.. must be some serious stenographers union or something.
@@davis3138 probably just burocracy. Sometime in the past they probably wrote rules regarding transcript archival that named the medium explicitly so they need to be changed before being able to replace the system
you do realise most courtrooms have already done this right? when i last went to a local court for a civil case, it was just microphones, each case, regardless of how small has to meet the same requirements. Its rather easy, and alot cheaper to just have a microphone in front of each speaker, and have a computer both record the audio and transcribe it automatically and save this data. Audio is a rather low bandwidth file, you can store hours of court room hearings on a simple 1gb USb drive, Let alone the servers which store TB of the stuff.
I'm a federal reporter w/26 yrs experience. I thought this video would be cool, but what a letdown. When I started, I was warned that audio would take over soon. Not gonna happen. Our magistrate judges use recording equipment, but there are so many parts during witness testimony where someone coughs in a microphone, papers shuffled near a microphone, attorneys walk around away from the microphone...well, you get my point. Most don't realize that you learn your writing theory on that crazy looking keyboard within maybe 2 or 3 months. It's getting up to speed that probably 90% of folks get frustrated and quit. And school only teaches you how to do 5 minute takes at certain speeds. It doesn't account for multiple speakers, accents, fast talkers, nervous attorneys butchering the English language, etc. And you're processing this in a split second and have to keep your fingers moving. It's strange because some days I can write perfectly several attorneys cutting each other off w/objections while an expert witness is still testifying, and I think I'm the greatest reporter on the planet. Then the next day, I flub the easiest most basic words I've written a million times. Such is life. Anyway, it's a great career that hardly anyone knows about.
What's the pay like?
They also do closed captioning for the hearing impaired on television, college classes, doctor appointments, etc. captioning can be VERY challenging because the stenographer has no ability to ask speakers to repeat or slow down, or to control how many people speak at one time. If you know any young person who isn’t sure what they want to do in the future, and they enjoy typing/reading, this is a FANTASTIC profession and is in HUGE demand all over the US.
e
Don't know if you're being sarcastic but this is probably one of the jobs which is going to be automated the soonest
@@EpicVideos2 Human factor can be countered only by another human.
@@EpicVideos2 Have you seen the autocaptions on videos where the primary speaker has a strong accent? Plus stenographers are able to identify the speaker and pick the right homonym. If courts and live TV suddenly decide that "kinda close enough" will work and silicon valley decides to train speech recognition algorithms on people who don't have American accents, we'd still be 5 years away. And I don't see either of those things happening soon
I love it when jobs are in HIGE demand.
For anyone curious why court transcripts need to be written instead of simply audio:
I’m a law school intern at the district attorneys office and one of my duties is transcribing police interrogation videos for my supervising prosecutor. The reason being that she can quickly glance thru a word document and see what’s important and keep referencing it as she writes out her motions and stuff. On the other hand, audio files suck because you have to listen to the entire thing to know what the hell happened and u obviously can’t just skim thru it to find what u need or see what’s important as easily. Court records will always be written down as opposed to audio files. Additionally, there are microphones in court but sometimes people cough or whatever so it’s not easy to hear, while the court reporter is right there and can ask them to repeat themselves so the written record will be much more accurate.
The 'skimming through the text' is very important and I don't understand why it isn't brought up more. And why it's not mentioned when people argue about just saving the audio files. This applies to everything, not just court cases or the law. Like, if I'm looking for a tutorial on the internet for anything, I will always pick a blog post/website over a video tutorial. Why? Because it's so much faster to pick the relevant information I need and even verify if it actually answers my question. I can go through 10 blogs/websites in the same time it takes me to watch one video tutorial, 20 if the person recording the audio is into rambling. Same with looking for information. Of course there are advantages for audio too, but text is just more convenient and more efficient.
That absolutely makes sense. I'm partially blind so, as I started college in 2009, the only option I knew about was audio books recorded by Learning Ally, known at the time as Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic. I absolutely LOATHED audio books for study because, even in DAISY format with a lot of markers in, it was an absolute pain in the backside to actually look through the dang book and pull out important details for study and such, and I never knew how some crap was spelled unless I looked it up on an actual computer. As an aside, most of the voices on those books were AWEFUL! I understand they were all volunteers, and respect that, but ugh ... Some voices were just not pleasant to listen to, or sometimes hard to understand, and definitely some coughs thrown in, and the narrators often switched randomly. I could only imagine the chaos of listening to an audio recording of a court case.
When I finally figured out what I wanted to study in the mid to late 10s, I attended a different school where the books were accessible PDF, MUCH better.
What I mean in this rambling is that I can absolutely understand why court records are much better suited to text than audio, especially as they would need referenced a lot and there's a lot that might get lost between the speaker and the mic.
@@seamarie3111 Never even had to rely on audiobooks but I think it'd be absolutely terrible if I had to 'read' my books like that. Audiobooks are, in my opinion, amazing to either: relax with a book you don't need or even wish to retain all the information or to 'preview' a book you might eventually want to read in depth. Almost every book people recommend to me I get in audio and do during chores, walks, etc. and if I really like them, I'll get a physical/kindle copy. And all that is in 2x speed, depending a bit on the narration, or it's just so much slower than reading speed it drives me nuts.
Still dislike the inability to quickly take notes or read back. (Kindle highlights alone are amazing for that.) And in the courtroom, at least this way the audio is 'checked' and guided, even if one day voice to text develops to a point it's extremely useful.
Interesting.
So, to do something akin to skim-reading you'd need a 'word cloud', but spacially distributed.
You'd need an (AI?) filter to read the words conveying most meaning aloud and create a virtual direction from left to right according to the words position on the 'page' you are currently skimming.
Or maybe a time distribution would be enough?
And the filter could be as simple as reading the lowest frequency words aloud?
The problem might be positioning the 'reading head' once a word triggers a desire to read a passage in depth.
Maybe just a back arrow to repeat the latest words read aloud?
Such a system would require some getting used to, but skim reading have to be learned too.
Hmm.
That'll go on my list of projects I probably never will finish ;-)
Ordinary civil cases in Germany don’t get a word-by-word protocol though. Every 15 minutes the judge will dictate a short wrapup onto tape and ask all parties if they have objections to said wrapup.
I was a trial lawyer when the only record of courtroom proceedings was made and kept by a stenographer. Their ability to function during hour after hour of sometimes tedious testimony, argument and requests to read back statements was amazing. To me they are the hardest working person in the courtroom. Then, at the end of the day, they may be requested to prepare of transcript of some or all the days testimony. If that isn’t enough, they may be asked to prepare a full transcript of a trial for an appeal. Audio recordings cannot ask someone to speak up, repeat an answer, spell out a scientific word, identify a speaker, etc, etc, etc.... . Sometimes a human cannot be replaced by a machine.
All these things you list at the end are routinely done by whoever operates the audio recorder in official settings. Record now, transcribe later. Best of both worlds. Software can provide a rough live draft to read back from should the need arise.
@@RasenRambo23 So what you've done is reinvent the wheel and made it worse, good job.
@@Sobepome worse? How's that any worse? Plus you can have individual mics for people, they are cheap nowadays. Automatic transcription is getting better by the day. Even automatic abstracts are a thing already. And automatic level detection that asks the speaker to speak up.
@@Sobepome Recorded audio in courtrooms isn't just a microphone in the courtroom. I've watched it. It's basically the stenographer speaking into a special mic, so instead of typing everything they are hearing, they are speaking it. But the court recorder is still the one controlling what gets put into the record.
I decided not to study court reporting because I knew I couldn't pay attention that long and that well. I'm amazed by the people who can.
Mad props to stenographers. (Do people still say "mad props?") I went to school to learn court reporting for four and a half years. It is incredibly difficult--I've heard it compared to learning a new language and a new instrument at the same time. I didn't graduate or get certification. I got stuck at 170 WPM for MONTHS and burned out. In my class of twenty-five, only two people didn't drop out by that point. Stenography is hard, but it is vital to the legal system. Also, closed captioning is just as important, if not more so, to make information and shows accessible to hearing impaired.
I understand the struggle. I just do stenography for fun now. hoping it might naturally make me fast one day lol
People never should have started saying "mad props", the morons. To answer your question, no, I don't hear it much anymore.
@Caroline-pb8xx how do you do it for fun?
I am sorry to hear that. I myself have looked into doing this for years now but now realize I don't think I can. I want to burst into tears. I want to do something with my life but don't know what.
@@samanthasmith4038 You will never know unless you try it first!
I once briefly dated a stenographer I got her to try to show me how to use her machine, it was baffling.
The interesting thing is people still have to transcribe the recorded audio into written transcripts, she did this as a side gig. She used a transcription machine plugged into a computer and would play the audio into headphones and use foot pedals to control the playback plus a few other software hotkeys and type on the machine while her computer brought up her output and the translation on a split screen. She was a demon, the audio was playing at close to 2x speed.
The real question is how was the date?
@@Theoryofcatsndogs I get the impression that the records would show his case fell apart during cross examination
"No I'm not gonna ask that, it's inappropriate"
@@pieceofpecanpieWow. Nicely done ☺
There's a growing number of hobbyist stenographers now which might change the way that most people can type since modern mechanical keyboards more than likely have the firmware capability for that. Who knows, might change the entire way you write.
Damn, that's interesting. I bet this'll come to haunt me when I'm 80 and all the young ones will be like "gotta learn steno, gramps"
Nah normal people ain't wasting their time with that only redditors would
Yes, I actually use steno as my daily driver on my computer. I find it more comfortable to use than normal typing.
Imagine trying to code on a stenographer
@@avasam06 A stenographer is a person who uses stenography, so I wouldn't want to code on a stenographer. I assume you mean coding with stenography. There are actually people who use stenography for coding, here's a video by someone doing just that: th-cam.com/video/q7g0ml60LGY/w-d-xo.html
I actually ran into a Stenographer last year. She said that many court rooms are recording AND trying to incorporate Human Stenographers because the human ear can detect the conversation better than when the audio cuts out or there is crosstalk and muddies the recording. Hence, she said there is a need for them now more than ever!
they should use better recording devices.
@@Fx_Explains There's also the human error factor when things go off record, like the judge near me who switched off the recorder for a conversation then realized it had never been turned back on for months.
@@lxktn1989 everyone saying "the human error" as if that's the end all argument of why we should have it be automated when the clear and more thought out answer is: "typically, the computer-error element is more rampant and misses context that a skilled human in this trade would pick up, so in this scenario a skilled human works better than the computer". Does this make sense for everybody?
@@Oneknee23 Oh I agree with you on the nuance. I'm talking human error of activating recording devices once they're off for private conferences being a negative of the digital devices.
There are dummy heads that perfectly capture the audio like a human would. You can use headphone and listen to it like you were there.
The advantages humans still have is the combination of different senses together. You can turn your head towards the one speaking and you can see their lips moving so there still is some better comprehension.
1:03 Cicero was Roman
This channel is just incorrect facts set to stock footage
"It dates back to ancient Greece"
*Shows a Roman politician*
I am glad that I am not the only one who noticed......
Was waiting for someone to comment this
was looking for this exact comment
Cicero fled Rome because he could be arrested, and lived in Greece for a while. In that period his slave 'invented' his own handwriting. Later they went back to Rome.
@@vv-iu8pe That's cool! Do you have a source? I'd love to dive deeper!
There is a program called Plover to use this on your own personal/work computer and you can buy community made steno keyboards online for a good price (or optimized keycaps for your current normal keyboard). But it’s going to take like half a year to relearn typing with such a keyboard. The plover community is a great start. I wish more people would know about stenography, thanks for making this video.
Yes
Do people learn to type? I never learned, I just did it. I'm sure stenography is way more complicated, but at the same time way more useful. I do a lot of meetings and I wish I could take notes at the speed people talk. We tried recording software and voice recognition software but frankly it sucked. You have to train it individually for each person speaking because many people have different accents. Having an unusual accent myself, I found that it garbled maybe 50% of what I said, and it was even worse with the French accents and Chinese accents.
@@garrick3727 yes, they learn. If you try a different typing method it obviously wouldn't work first time, you would write slower than average. This includes everyone, unless you are a machine.
@@garrick3727 Yes, and there's plenty who didn't and are very inefficient and annoying to be around when typing
A stenograph is closer to a musical instrument than a keyboard. A unique machine to be sure.
The craziest thing is the top row of a stenograph is almost exactly my name!! No, I am not “Stph Fpltd” but my name is Steph Fupalotid
For a second I thought of a piano keyboard and was like "those are electronic pianos." lol just a misread. It is quite a fascinating keyboard for text
Look at the Italian stenotype Michele, it's pretty much a MIDI keyboard.
@@CantTellYoudamn that’s crazy
Thanks to openstenoproject and plover, it is actually possible to use steno with an NKRO keyboard on a computer.
Also, fun fact: in Chinese, typing the way you speak in slower than typing the way you write because many characters have the same sound. That being said, Chinese stenography is still sound based because that is faster for transcribing speech.
damn so how does the computer know which character to pick? off of context?
@@elliotw.888 Good question
@@elliotw.888 You type the Romanized version (in pinyin) and then select the correct character from a list, usually with the most common/probable one appearing first. That extra step is part of what makes it slower than root/stroke-based methods.
@@elliotw.888 Most homophone snafus are prevented with context.
@@EebstertheGreat Yeah. It shows you a list of signs you can pick, and you either just hit space or press the corresponding number at each sign. And if you use a sign more often than another in writing, it'll show more. In traditional Chinese, he/she (Tā) is the same, except in signs (Tā 他 He / Tā 她 She). If you then pick female/male, and write Tā again, it will show that gender as the first option.
Cicero was Roman, not Greek.
yeah but he was a man
It's all Greek to me
This is a big one for the correction videos
was looking for this comment hoping I wasn't the only one
@@aletheiai who cares about a grekoid though, ew
I heard a story about how a basketball player (I don’t know who) was talking with the stenographer during a break at a press conference and was amazed at how they could write so many words so quickly. After the break, he started his first answer by saying a lot of obscure words to give the stenographer something interesting to type. I don’t know how true that is, but it’s an interesting story.
University of Wisconsin basketball student Nigel Hayes. I was a student at the time and that was everywhere.
@@Thunderstruck170 That’s probably right. My mom works at UW Madison and both my parents graduated from there, so I probably heard it from one of them.
lol the stenographer be like: "STAP I can't keep up with these weird words! Hold on, let me add these to my dictionary! Talk slower omg!"
@Berty Wooster Straight up racism
@Berty Wooster You were on the NBA?
I was a freelance court reporter for 29 years. I went into the field after taking Gregg Shorthand for three years in high school. I enjoyed the mental challenge of both systems.
I never realized that stenographers typed by chording until now. I'm partially blind, so I'm also used to chording, though in a much different way than stenographers use. However, as I grew up writing in Braille, I've always felt like I'm able to type faster in Braille than I can with a standard QUERTY keyboard, though my typing speed's not bad either. It certainly helps when I need to write a lot on my phone and can just enter my iPhone's Braille Screen Input, which is WAY faster for me than the on-screen keyboard.
For those who don't know, standard Grade 2 Braille has a lot of shorthand in it, like one cord for the words and, the, as, of, the, etc, as well as a lot of contractions within words. While physical Braille takes up a lot more space than print, it's pretty interesting when I think about just how much shorthand there is. To be honest, sometimes when I'm spelling things, I kind of have to translate OUT of the Braille contraction in my head, if that makes sense. I find it amazing that stenographers can learn to type by syllables alone.
I majored in visual disabilities and this video immediately called to mind the Perkins Brailler and Braille contractions.
@@cwctlh Ah, the good ol' Perkins ... I've had mine over 25 years, since Kindergarten. That metal beast got a LOT of use! I'll always keep it, even if I don't use it very often. It's so well-made compared to the plastic ones I've seen today, which I can't stand.
@@seamarie3111 Those metal ones are indestructible! They weigh a ton and they're awkward to carry, but they definitely last a lifetime.
@@cwctlh LOL, got that right! Mine's been serviced only once in 25 years, and it still works almost perfectly, aside from the enter key not functioning properly. I guess I should try to get it serviced, but I'm not sure the cost, and don't want anyone messing it up.
Technology is amazing, and I use it so much, but nothing quite beats nice, crisp Braille on a page. I need to order some books from the NLS, I've not done that in ages, since before the pandemic. I am lucky enough to have a Braille display, but even that just isn't the same as reading books on paper. Sorry, off-topic rant over!
As fast as I feel I'm able to type in Braille, I still find it amazing that stenographers can approach 300WPM. That's just amazing!
It's not a rant at all, and it's a pleasure to have someone to discuss Braille, technology, and everything else in the visual disabilities world. I graduated from college in 1974 (not a typo, lol). I ended up teaching kids with severe physical and intellectual disabilities so I didn't use a lot of what I learned, but I've tried to at least have some idea of what's going on in the field. I love thumbing through every new issue of the Printing House catalog. It's fascinating to see what's new, what already existed when I was in college, and everything in between. One of my annual rituals is ordering a new Braille/large print wall calendar for the coming year. I graduated from Florida State. When I arrived in 1970, there was a buzzer on a busy campus crosswalk to indicate that it's (allegedly) safe to cross. The visual disabilities professors and the Blind Services counselor hated it because the blind and partially sighted students depended on it instead of their hearing. The buzzer is still there and operational! Now the fully sighted students use it to know when to cross the street without looking up from their phones, lol. The visual disabilities program there, which still exists, was very small. I felt like I was a member of an exclusive club that knew a secret code.
Thanks Sam for slowing the video down so the novice Stenographers can catch up
today someone commented i should delete all videos :( people can be so mean. but i dont care. i know im the best. i never give up. i am age 80+ and will never stop. thanks for caring, dear sas
@AxxL @Newcious cry
God the spambots
Jeez so many bots here
@@AxxLAfriku you should delete all videos
Way back when, my mom did the typing of the transcript as she played back the audio recording the stenographer had created of the deposition. We helped by creating her paper pile. That is, if the court reporting company said they needed an original and 2 copies, we took 3 sheets of typewriter paper and layer a sheet of carbon paper between them. Think of the set as a double-beef hamburger where the beef is the carbon and the buns are the paper. My mom was paid per set. When I was in college and looking for a part-time job she suggested asking at the company to see if they had any messenger jobs available. They didn't but they pointed me to another one. The next thing I knew I was photocopying the single pages and making the sets needed and then delivering them to the lawyers in Manhattan. (This company had in-house typists that read the stenograph paper and typed the pages). Got to learn the subway that way.
Good job explaining how a court reporter does their job. The shortcuts to which you refer are called “brief forms,” and court reporters create them prior to the deposition or on the fly for certain high-frequency words specific to that particular deposition. As of 2022, audio recording still has a long way to go before it can compete with a human. Court reporters who are proficient with the machine and understand the shorthand system can go one step further, writing conflict-free in real time. This means that as they are speaking, the attorney’s words are coming up on their computer monitor nearly instantaneously and fully translated (e.g., readable). Conflicts are words such as “meet” and “meat,” which sound the same but have different meanings. I’ve been married to a court reporter for 30+ years and it still seems like magic to me. Cheers!
Im a newly graduated stenographer, our profession has constantly faced the argument that AI will replace us. They’ve said this for as long as computers existed and guess what, it still hasn’t replaced us. Our skill and ability will always be better than what AI can do. When you watch the news and see “there’s a tomato coming” instead of “there’s a tornado coming,” know that if a stenographer were captioning, you would go to the basement and not the garden.
Edit: to all the people saying AI will take my profession away, it won’t. There is a system in place that advocates for humans to be in the room writing the record, writing a class for a hard of hearing individual, or captioning a broadcast. The only reason any type of digital reporting is used is due to a lack of reporters available. So I’m done trying to convince people I’ll have a career for life. I know I will and everyone should be advocating for human beings having jobs and not fighting that AI will be better and take over.
Last part of your comment is hilarious🤣
Be cautious stating human skill will *always* be better than technology.
@@fearalice Tech will be limited by human skill and human fears, so it's a very safe bet to say that tech will be less than human skill.
I think AI can surpass humans eventually but we're making comparisons to the AI we have now which is seriously not that advanced at all and progress in that area isn't as fast as people think.
@@leadpaintchips9461 By that reasoning, humans should be able to work metal into desired shape better than a cnc machine. Which is why when the cnc machine came out, it fizzled out because it couldn't keep up with the skill of humans. Oh wait.
I want a logistics video on how HAI kidnapped Sam from Wendover
@Tommy Gaming 🅥 nah that ain't it chief, your vids are trash. Got back to PUBG or something. I heard bots are still for hire.
th-cam.com/video/YThNnGgZqcc/w-d-xo.html Top 10 floppa.
Don't be crazy Mr.... uhh... USA. Sam from Wendover and Sam from HAI are to completely different people.
Oh my god the bots in this comment section
They aren't the same person. That Wendover guy is not even half as interesting.
My Grandma was a Stenographer, and still is at 75. Props to her!
Thats badass i bet she knows everyone 😂
@@kathrinefer7301 yep! Haha!
This is one of those things that would be really hard to learn at first, having to remember what keys mean what and what order to press them in, etc. but I'm sure you would get exponentially better at it once you finally know what you're supposed to do
Yup, I'm a couple of months in of steady practice and while I'm not fast, I can already write most words now without looking stuff up.
Stenographer in training here. A big reason why stenographers aren’t afraid of technology is they are unable to differentiate between basic words let alone any nuance. Lets say for example somebody is trying to say three but they pronounce it as tree, a computer would still mess up where the human would be able to write it down correctly. Similarly if someone were to be asked if they killed a man and respond with “I did?” The computer would just pick up “you killed a man” “I did” so it’s pretty clear to see how that couldn’t work. Entire court cases have been thrown out because of this costing the courts tons of money.
Edit: let me also add that if stenographers were replaced by AI, black and other racial minorities would be greatly hurt as the AI are largely modeled off of accents found more commonly in white communities.
An audio recording could simply record "tree" in all it's context and a question with all it's nuance. Plus recordings don't make mistakes. People do.
@@thersten example 1 of missing the point, ladies and gentlemen.
@@agathamayra5045 I'm not seeing how..
I’m sure the stenographers in the U.K. thought the same. Right up until 2012 when they were all replaced by digital recording and transcription.
@@nstrug source? I’m almost certain you are full of shit because as far as I know machine shorthand never made it’s way from the us to the uk because the accents change how you write drastically. From what I know, the uk is still mostly analog using pen and paper. Still possible but much slower.
Cicero's Wisdom
"To live is to think."
"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."
"Never injure a friend, even in jest."
"Nothing dries sooner than a tear."
"Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself."
"The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil."
"I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity."
"An unjust peace is better than a just war."
"The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct."
"The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust."
"The safety of the people shall be the highest law."
"Silence is one of the great arts of conversation."
"Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error."
"The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk."
"I love slavery soooo much. Slavery is cool and good. Are you writing this down, slave? Did you get the part about how slavery is cool and good? No, no, you're right, that doesn't really sound like one of my quotes. How about, like, 'Slavery is the bedfellow of tranquil pleasures.' Yeah, hell yeah, I love that. Write that down."
Glad i read through all that
Ah
That last one seems legit
Beat me to it!
Stenotypes are one of those magic things that elude me. Like, I know how they work, but it's still black magic to me.
nice pfp
th-cam.com/video/YThNnGgZqcc/w-d-xo.html Top 10 floppa.
It's like knitting. My wife even tried to teach me, but apparently I'm not psychic enough to commune with the evil spirits who enable that black magic.
@@RichConnerGMN based
It's quite an art
I've worked with several Stenographers, though we just call them Court Reporters. The best of which could do real-time. Many court reporters actually do what they can in court and then just record it all so they can go back and clean up their "copy". The software on their computers actually links the audio recording to the section it corresponds to in text record. So if they look through it at the end of the day and see some gibberish where they mistyped, they can highlight the section and hit play, and it will play back the audio allowing them to fix what they've written. Real-time certified reporters are so good that they have less than a certain percentage of errors over time, and typically will provide the ability for Attorneys (at a cost) to see the live transcribed text, and of course often provided to the court as well as part of the contract or for free if they're court employees. Also, if it's a trial or big deal hearing, they can have people "scoping" for them off-site. Where a copy of their transcript is synced over the cloud to someone else's computer and is cleaned up and synced back essentially. So if someone is looking at the transcript in real time in the courtroom and they scroll back up a few minutes later, what might have been gibberish before will now be properly filled in. This is both to provide a good real-time service, but also to cut down on work after hours when the parties inevitably request daily copies from the reporter. If the copy has already been scoped it's more a "quick" read through checking for errors, and then sending it off. Where I work most reporters are employed by the court and receive a salary, and also get paid by the parties when requesting various transcripts and services such as real-time during the event. I think one of the largest challenges for reporting to transition to AI will be the attribution to speakers, and accuracy. These will get better the longer the hearing, or if the system allowed for building voice models for various attorneys that are loaded in each time and improved over time, it could get insanely accurate. This plus hiring transcribers to clean up the transcript after the fact will one day replace court reporters, but when, I don't know.
Good to see that stenography is still widely talked about! I’m currently learning Pitman shorthand.
I wouldn't call a single HAI video about something 'widely talked about' lol
@@theSato I say when it comes to stenography, it is. Search "stenography" on TH-cam -- this video is currently among the first results.
@@obscurehuntsman613 That goes to show you how little stenography is talked about.
sick! Im learning Gregg shorthand
@@obscurehuntsman613 very dumb statement
To be clear, ya'll: when you call 911, the operators have a minimum typing score of 120 wpm. That's with zero errors, of course. My mom worked for the VAPD for 14 years and got over 150wpm.
I'm a computer nerd who, before voice chat, communicated mid-game entirely via keyboard. At my height I probably reached roughly 100 wpm, with at least one error.
300 wpm. That's absolutely insane.
Friend of mine was in the same situation (no mic), averages 120 (in German) with 3 fingers using caps lock, which is quite amazing to me (10f - 60wpm).
120 is extremely high for a job like 911 dispatch. 80-100 would be more than sufficient.
When I worked for county 911 here in Washington the minimum typing score was 40 wpm.
Even a keyboarding speed of 40 words per minute can be faster than writing in script form with ink and paper. All it takes is to tap keystrokes accurately without errors made.
Obligatory 911 operator here and that is just not true. Minimum to apply for my job is something pitiful like 45. I'm one of the fastest on the floor of hundreds of employees at about 115 peak with errors, 100 corrected wpm. Most call taking is done with scripted software that gets mostly multiple choice answers with a few instances of needing to type names and addresses.
Recorded audio has some serious disadvantages as a primary record in many use cases, though it can be fine as a backup or supplementary record. Those disadvantages are likely disappearing as technology advances, but given how far court budgets lag the rest of the world, it will be a long time until steno isn't a common practice.
You’re right in some aspects. I think a ton of money goes into audio though. I have seen very expensive systems. They still don’t work that well compared to a live contemporaneous record.
There’s also the issue of a Judge wanting a read back of something from earlier in the hearing. Plus, the recording has to be transcribed at some point anyway. Some lesser court hearings are going to digital reporters, which is having a recording instead of a stenographer, but there’s still someone in the room who will, if need be, transcribe the hearing transcript after the fact.
TLDR; Court Reporters aren’t going anywhere.
Also, there is the fact that these are legal records and require a human to swear to their authenticity. In fact, stenographers are also notaries and are thus considered court officials. An AI transcription could never be trusted to be an official record unless a human has reviewed it word for word. AI makes mistakes. MAYBE one day the technology will be there, it's just not there yet.
@@EmpressMermaid Which is relevant with depositions. They swear in the witness. Plus, depositions aren’t in courtrooms.
Imma ask something why they don't just buy the audio equipment with the money that will be given to the stenographer it will be more efficient and cheap overtime
"Miss Diaz, please stop threatening the stenographer."
My mother learned Steno ("the deutsche Einheitskurzschrift", "german unified stenography") in the 50's in school and worked as a secretary for a manager of a big company until her marriage.
She never lost her ability to write in DEK by hand (de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Einheitskurzschrift) for typewriting until she died.
Stenographers are still extremely useful in courtroom. Judges and lawyers don't want to listen again to a whole audio recording of a hearing if we can just ctrl+F our way out of it.
Why not take the recording and then transcribe the audio from there?
@@twentyninedoesnotlastforev5455 then someone still has to transcribe it.
@@tongraymondtong6693 the phone I’m using to type this out on as well as most phones have the technology needed to do that without a person
It’s that little microphone that lets u talk to type lol
@@alicemirga2435 they don't work well at all with accents though
@@alicemirga2435 talk to type can't pick up or tell apart homonyms, interruptions, coughs, stutters, speakers, etc. Stenographers are superior because of that.
I think even if you switched to audio recording, stenographers would still be needed! The transcript eventually has to be converted into a paper document, and AI just can't do it. So you'd need to have someone transcribe the audio recording. And the best people to do that would be Stenographers who can write it out without needing to go back in the recording over and over. So at that point, you might as well just pay the stenographers to be in the courtroom doing it live with all the context, facial cues, body language, and no chances of audio being corrupted or improperly recorded.
That's the key part - audio clarity. Normal people tend to mumble and agitated people (common in court) tend to talk over each other. Stenographer is authorized by the court to tell these people to speak up, repeat themselves, or to STFU and let the other party talk.
Agreed that stenographers are still necessary. Something I don't understand, though, is why people who want to use audio recordings don't ever (not that I've heard) bring up just doing multiple recordings? A mic for the judge, one for the witness stand, etc. A computer can't "understand" the interaction the way a stenographer can, but it can keep the recordings aligned by time. Would solve the problem of people talking over each other--the computer could play all recordings simultaneously to recreate how it sounded in the court room, or could play back individual tracks.
@@zoyadulzura7490 My understanding is many courts don't record audio for privacy reasons, not technical reasons. In fact, many courts don't even allow any devices in the courtroom capable of recording. It's to protect the identities of witnesses, jury members, etc.
@zoyadulzura7490 I'm a former transcriber in Australia and that's what we do. Each courtroom has multiple mics: Bench, witness box, and two on the Bar. There's often also cameras. Important proceedings are livestreamed to a team of transcribers, who can return a complete transcript in just a few hours. Lower priority matters are recorded and the file is sent to contractors who type it up and sent it back in a few days or weeks. It's true that AI can't replace what transcribers do, but it doesnt need to because this system works quite well.
A stenographer switching jobs from a courtroom to a tv news station will quickly expand their dictionary many times over.
FINALLY, IT'S BEEN INTRODUCED TO THE MAINSTREAM! plover is gonna get allot of new downloads soon I bet
Yup, lots of new people stopping into discord lately!
@@ShawnFumo nice, hopefully some cheaper hardware gets released for the growing community
@@yesusisyeemo Well the EcoSteno and Uni are both being semi-mass produced and are about $100 each. It'd be nice if it was even cheaper, but I think it'll be hard to do with the current costs of mechanical keyboard switches and all that.
@@ShawnFumo that is true though I feel as if mass production may allow them to be cheaper. this'll only be possible if the community grows from a niche to something worth mass producing products for
Ayyyy I’m training to be a stenographer! Warms my heart to see our profession getting the attention it deserves
It’s truly amazing what humans are capable of learning with hundreds of hours of practice and experience. This would be a difficult job to get into.
"You've just wasted another six minutes of your precious life"
Sam the banana man says at four and a half minutes into the video
No, he's also counting the time you spent to pause and read the wisdoms
Also, the time we wasted reading comments. HE IS ON TO US.
I was a Court Stenographer for many years! It was a great profession!
A lot of Hospitals and Doctors are moving away from transcription and into voice recognition and it's actually been a disaster.
The transcriptionists have to go back into the documents and re-write everything anyway because they're so bad
As long as humans are quirky with their speach, equally quirky himans will have to transcribe it.
My X was a medical transcriptionist for 22 years before Voice Recognition software put him out of a job, a couple jobs actually. Only a tiny handful of doctors at my hospital use a transcriptionist simply because of the heavy accents.
@Alex Daniel's drumming vids. my mother has been a medical transcriptionist since the 80s, and I can tell you that I am not mistaken. None of the 5-6 hospitals around here can depend on voice recognition and every single one of them uses transcriptionists to redo almost every single one of them
I worked as a registrar (clerk) in Superior Court. The real-time steno setups were impressive. The reporters (stenos) made fortunes on big trials doing real-time and daily (sometimes twice daily) transcriptions.
Audio is currently rubbish for legal records. I’ve headed numerous PACE interviews, which are digitally recorded. What an utter nightmare to try is find distinguishable distinction’s when listening back. For example, a mumbled reply, which to one person is more audible than others, translating accents, speech impediment’s into a sensitive mic, two voices that are very closely related may be difficult to distinguish. You cannot go back to that date and time and say, “oh, repeat that sentence please” if it’s not clear. It may be a minor as a background rustle that can distort the sound, and that particular word is lost. In court, presenting the spoken word, for example in evidence, the stenographer may interrupt and ask for the word to be repeated. The digital recorder is no where near intelligent enough to send an audible signal to alert the speaker to repeat the word, not yet anyway. Stenography is an art, not only of recording, but listening. Why change something if it ain’t broken. Changes for change sake, and typically modern, resource hungry thinking, yeah let’s use more resources to make equipment that can break down and cost a fortune, then employ some poor soul to check the recording against the audio, plus when it needs an upgrade (as its no longer supported or it’s not reliable ), let’s buy another one and keep swallowing up resources, and your left with a load of junk that’s only 65% recyclable. People are pretty cost effective, they have a place in the world, and I know the stenographer is here to stay for a long time yet, thank goodness! Your much better than some polluting, plastic box, full of resource hungry parts, travelling half way around the world on a container ship, onto a truck, into a van, all guzzling diesel and polluting the planet! 🤷♀️🤦♀️
These people are bloody wizards. Absolutely outstanding skill
My mother is a stenographer. Stenographers do a lot more than was discussed. Imagine not only typing everything that was said, but also discerning true words from "uh" and "um", labeling exactly who is saying what, dealing with people talking over each other, having to keep pace with a volatile conversation, having to remember any word on a dime, managing your own dictionary, etc. Furthermore, the claim that this video "won't be relevant" in the future is completely unsubstantiated. Not only is a recording useless without an official LEGAL record, a computer cannot make a judgement call like a human can; a computer can't judge on the spot which word was just spoken based on context, tone, subject, and other factors. This whole video sounds like a trivializing of this profession and it is shameful.
While you are right about this video trivialising the amazing work of stenographers, you are also wildly underestimating the progress of ai. However technological progress is often far faster than beurocracy...
I work at a court in Brazil. In 2010, I was required to have a typing test in order to get the job. But I have worked at hearings for many years since and never needed to type fast, because we record them in audio and video. It's just a little hard for the workers that write decisions, because it'd be faster for them if they got a text instead of a video.
I used to average 90 on type racer in school. My record was 130, but I could never repeat that feat. Meanwhile my opponents shift it into fifth and seemingly effortlessly go 180-220.
Love Type Racer. It honestly brings me more thrill and excitement than any other video game lmao
OMG. Type Racer!! I had forgotten all about that 🤩
@@Alice_Walker @george we should give it a bash for old time's sake.
Court reporters aren't going away no matter how much techbros want them to, and every time they try to argue for AI they reveal how little they understand about the process for producing and protecting a record and how courts actually function in a day to day sense. Also money seems to be no object, it would be insanely more expensive just to run even their idealized dream setup.
It's always the Elon stans lol
My grandpa was a judge. And his stenographer taught me to type and read steno when I was little even before I learned to type on QWERTY. It honestly made it harder to learn when I started using the Apple II’s in third grade.
Try buying a Solo - they're only about $120
in Poland we use normal keyboard stenotypist (qwerty). (btw: Polish language words are writed as it's spelled). Court trial use to take long becouse they usually dictate clearly what is to be writed down to protocol. There are project for system of recording the trial, but there are lots of problems with developing it (from objections of judges to equipment failure and regulation of access to recordings).
Same with Serbo-Croatian Im from Serbia
Why’s that the case? Does Poland simply not have enough people who know how to do stenography, or does steno simply not work with the Polish language?
@@grubbygeorge2117 Good question. Probably its like coding - this solution is enought for English - easy and by that popular. In the group of the most popular 6,000 words in English, the overwhelming majority are one- and two-syllables. In Polish, the words are longer and there are more sounds (and letters in the alphabet), and there are consonant clusters (like in other Slavic languages, sounds quite tough and rustles). We need less words to explain something, but that words are more complicated. Different word-endings gives them a precise meaning. There are notability in usage of each ending letters. And writing by latin letters as it sounds, plays a servant role. It may seem that in Polish we speak faster, but globally the amount of information per minute in all languages is similar (limited by brain buffor or transfer). Generally this specificity (richness of sounds) makes Polish difficult to create a simplified device to write faster. Same as our speech apparatus must catch up with its faculties to produce all these sounds. Stenography keybord would require more key combinations. It turns out that no one appreciates this as worth the effort to construct, compared to adapting existing solutions. There was a manual shorthand record in Poland, but it was not mechanized and is currently not popular (it was used by doctors and journalists among others).
Probably Germans have the same issue- their words seems like clumps of words to give them specific usage/meaning.
@@polabora ah, our famously long words that are combinations of other words :D
@@aramisortsbottcher8201 so, how do you write stenograms, protocols in German courts? Did you have special techniques or keyboards to this?
I had a professor in college who was very hard of hearing and the university provided a stenographer with the equipment and a laptop to transcribe any questions that students had during the lecture.
I went to school for stenography. I got up to around 240. Unfortunately the school was very poorly run and they essentially just took the majority of the students money without providing teachers that had the proper knowledge to instruct and dictate to us. Besides that, it’s been nearly 20 years since I was in school for it and I still hear the way that people speak in phonetics. I can also picture/feel out the keystrokes of conversations that I’m hearing, including the shortcuts that we used for common phrases. If you know you know - you never forget!
If you aren’t retired, I know there is huge demand out there right now depending on the area you live..
Effectively speaking, this is essentially learning a whole other language, then drilling it into your brain enough that you can translate on reflex into hand movements as fast as people are talking.
Yeah, it’s no big deal, I’ll probably do it tomorrow.
@@jonathanleblanc2140 Report back and tell how it went
Kind of, though it isn't anywhere near as involved as a full language. You need to absorb various rules and built muscle memory, but you're still producing normal English in the end. I've only been at it a couple of months and can already write most stuff. And I think most people could get to over 100wpm in a year. The really difficult thing is actually getting up to consistent 225wpm to graduate. But I'm just doing it myself on my computer with open source software and a cheap hobbyist keyboard, so I don't have to worry about that if I don't want to.
I've always found it spooky that stenographers stop typing the moment the person stops talking. You'd think there'd be a tiny bit of a delay.
I wish I'd learned manual shorthand in high school. I was terrible at taking notes in college because I have ADHD and a bit of OCD, so would constantly hesitate over which words to write and how to write them. By the time I wrote down one item the professor would have covered several more. Couldn't take the typing and shorthand course in high school - it was a "girl's course." Not closed to boys, but virtually none took it. (1970s) Plus, it didn't use the academic part of the brain so I might not get an A, which would screw up my GPA for college. I considered taking the course but couldn't afford the hit to getting into top choice colleges or to scholarships.
Retrospectively did the _top choice colleges or scholarships_ really matter?
@@tappajaav Went to the top university in my state system (NY). Applied to only a couple of private schools, was afraid of the tuition and *non-tuition costs,* and so was my family, so never really investigated scholarships. Was a disappointment to my guidance counselor, I was her only student ever who had a real shot at getting into Harvard, but I wouldn't even apply. (SAT scores were really good, aside from a great GPA).
Ultimately none of it really mattered since I had ADHD, which was unknown at the time, and didn't know how to cope with it. Plus another personal problem (no, not drugs). So I dropped out twice and never graduated.
Serendipity kicked in, though. An extracurricular activity turned into a career. There was a student run ambulance service, and a couple of years later I became a NYC paramedic. It was a rewarding career - immediately rewarding, day by day, which most careers don't provide. Never would have ended up with it if I'd gone to Harvard. :)
@@donjones4719 The last section is all that mattered. Great to hear you found enjoyable profession.
Shorthand should still be taught for this very reason.
As someone who does transcription and captioning of recorded audio and video, yeah no, stenographers are needed and hella impressive. I couldn't do it.
AI is nowhere near what you think it is, humans are always having to go in and correct it. And do you know how many recordings sound like they've been made on a potato at the bottom of a lake in the next county over? There are countless reasons why especially in a courtroom, recordings won't replace stenographers anytime soon
Just hit the CC button at the bottom of youtube video and it will become immediately obvious why stenographers will be around for a long long time.
3:00 swog? That was your example? Swog? Bro, you were one letter away from swag... :p
My mom learnt Stenography and Pitmans Shorthand in Ghana Sectretarial Schools. 1965-1966. She was the first stenographer and qualified secretary in Southern Africa.
Wow! I’m a stenographer and that’s great to hear! I just went to Ghana 🇬🇭!
Imagine getting into an online argument with a stenographer (especially since these days one can configure their keyboard or make a custom keyboard to act like a stenograph).
How would that be any different?
Online arguments are turn-based.
@@choo_choo_ But you can take your turn faster.
@@choo_choo_ not on Discord...
@@MrMoon-hy6pn Still gotta wait for the person to take theirs so you're not really saving any time. Just like you had to wait 2 days for me to take mine.
@@georgiishmakov9588 Yes on Discord. Still gotta wait for those people to spend 5 mins formulating a counter argument.
My mom was a Teacher . She later became a stenographer. So proud of her 😊
Quick heads up, but we don't really use the term Stenograph to refer to the keyboard, as that's the name of the company that made the first one. The generic term nowadays is just "Steno Machine" because other companies make them as well.
To expand on your coment, written shorthand is stenography and machine shorthand is stenotypy.
@@kathytoy5055 It’s never called stenotypy in my country. I’ve noticed it differs between countries, with overlap between the USA and Canada. We call it stenography.
@@elizabethhgrace Yeah, I'm being a stickler. TECHNICALLY, etc. Because I'm a court reporter, see? By the way, when I started 30 years ago, people were saying all the same things that are seen in the comments here and the errors in the video, so there's that.
@@kathytoy5055 I am also :P
@@elizabethhgrace Nice to meet you, colleague!
Great video! I'd also like to point out that voice writing, an alternative method to machine shorthand, is gaining a lot of ground in the court reporting and captioning field. It requires the reporter to repeat what they're hearing into a microphone while speech recognition software tailored to the reporter's voice converts it to legible text. The reporter or captioner also includes special punctuation and formatting commands such as speaker labels into their dictation to ensure transcript accuracy. Like machine shorthand, this comes with its own set of challenges as well, and it can take several months and even years to master.
Cheers to all the guardians of the record!
1:03 little one for the mistakes video at the end of the year Cicero was from rome (he was a senator) not greece
I love that old TV/film footage at 4:01 - the actress clearly has no idea how to use the keyboard properly and is just flailing around, the steno version of q;sldkfjqw;flkjqw;elkfjqw;ldkfgj.
I think that this would be a good skill to learn because even though I'll probably never use it in a court room, because it's certainly faster than journaling. Typing is fast to write down my thoughts but sometimes I just think too fast or make a spelling error that I have to fix or mess up in some other way and I forget what I'm talking about entirely. Sometimes I write and then fill in words later on so I can write as fast as I think but it gets messy at times. That's why it'd be great to learn this!
Yeah, getting text down at speaking speed would be a fantastic skill to teach in schools I think. Would help greatly in college lectures 😆
are you guys serious? there are transcription functions in most text processing apps (Word for instance). Just turn it on and speak into your microphone...
only reason to use a stenographer is because a human can intelligently listen and filter out who is speaking and only write down the important things with more accuracy and accountability. You probably need a sophisticated array of microphones + artificial intelligence to fully automate & replace stenographers
@@TheRedstonePlayerMC Do you talk the same way you write? Do you like talking out loud to yourself for extended periods of time? Are you even in a setting where you can talk out loud? News flash: different people... do things differently.
@@TheRedstonePlayerMC i've tried those things. Even when i tried to speak clearly and with the right mic position, it still messes up words often enough that typing on my thumb is faster. And it also only support English.
Time and time again over decades stenographers have proven their superiority when compared to audio recording and speech to text. There is no substitute for accuracy, speed, and cost than a human stenographer
whhhaaaayyy!!
Cicero was ROMAN! Boom! love your videos though. But i also love pedantry x
I went to court reporting school and I am a captioner now. I love my job! If you’re good at linguistics and english it’s a great field. Plus, more demand = more $ :)
That's a pretty good explanation of how steno works. Thanks for making this video!
me talking at 400 words per minute: Ah finally, a worthy opponent.
Bleifreier Kaffe, Freund!!!
Stenography was one of those things I accidentally learned about when I misspelled the word 'steganography' when researching something for school. I went down one hell of a rabbit hole and managed to learn it well enough to type about 20wpm with my normal keyboard and some special software in about a week. Can't remember any of it now though
I have a friend training to be a stenographer and they've specifically said that human stenographers almost certainly won't become irrelevant with audio recording- the will probably used as WELL AS stenographers for redundancy - audio files can get corrupted or lost, etc
I really enjoyed the joke about how reading can help improve your attention span and then talking about wanting to get back into "reading" by listening to books while doing other things.
Classic!
While stenography may be waning in relevance in the court room, they're as important as ever when it comes to live broadcasting. Automatic speech recognition will simply never be as accurate as a human being typing what they're hearing. It struggles with identifying speakers and also struggles when there's a lot of back and forth between multiple people. For that reason, stenography will always have a place in the world, specifically in broadcasting.
We also assume the correct word when sounds are similar by its context.
Also writers and programmers can also learn steno to reduce RSI.
I worked as a word processor in the 1980s and, to keep from going brain dead, invented my own short forms and a replacement macro to convert them to text. It was a lot of fun to develop and troubleshoot.
I write programming code, so my typing speed is around 8-10 words per minute
I know eh! Every programming teacher I've had be like, "I'm not very good at typing."
I never knew steno could be written on keybords. In my grandparents generation they just write this stuff by hand, my grandma even being kind of professional in her time.
I did medical transcription for 25 years, and I could transcribe 90 words per minute. I could take dictation off of a Dictaphone or a related system, and I used shortcut software, e.g. I could type "EGD" and the software would spell out "esophagogastroduodenoscopy." I could transcribe 15 minutes of dictation per hour of typing, which meant that the doctor who handed me a tape with 50 minutes of dictation on it and told me she needed it in 10 minutes was out of luck, and I also discovered early on that most doctors couldn't spell, so it was up to me to know how to spell the medical terminology. I enjoyed the job, but, alas, I've been replaced by voice-recognition software, which as of yet isn't sensitive enough to do a really good job transcribing speech, e.g. I have seen some things in medical records that are truly mind-boggling.
My grandfather worked as a stenographer in a company in my hometown and retired 15 years ago. My dad joined the country's highways as a stenographer too and he's currently a secratary in an University. He always worships the shorthand book everyday. If I ask why, he says "That's the book that gave me a life. I'll never forget it"
That is pretty cool, when someone can recognize ONE event, picture, person, book, film, speech, statement, or thought as one most critical in their existence. The closest I can come to that is "I know which side my bread is buttered on.", when I think of how important my family was in my childhood, and my life as it turned out. A statement that reminds me of what is truly important in life!
To me, stenographers are the stars of the courtroom. Every time I am in one (for whatever reason) I always zone in on them. I wonder to myself 'how in the world are they able to type everything so fast' ...now I know
0:23 And Ohio does not yet have access to the internet.
It’s true, I drove 45 min just to post this comment
@@orangecayman520 Ooh, how was traffic?
@@dannypipewrench533 He's back home
@@swaminsaneand haven't left Ohio for 2 yrs.
They got it recently, it only goes out when the hamster gets off the wheel for a nap.
My mom knows shorthand, she writes instead of typing what is being spoken & after once it's completed she then translates it back to English & simultaneously types it.
Went to a court reporting school/program. Couldn't finish (family obligations). Loved it. I also know Gregg shorthand.
I hate typing class, so I proved my typing teacher wrong by typing 75 wpm without home row keys. It is very helpful.
honestly home-row is just the easiest way to learn how to touch-type. if you can touch-type without it, then you're fine, but I suspect you're still regularly glancing at the keyboard.
i suspect that because that used to be me. I used to type 70+ wpm without using home row and thought I didn't need it, but when I got older i sat down and forced myself to learn home row typing properly, and my average jumped to 90~100 wpm and I can touch-type blindfolded with very few errors per minute at those speeds. i can even feel most errors as i type them and backspace to correct without looking at the keyboard _or_ the screen. so you might think you're doing fine without learning "proper" typing technique, but if you still need to look at the keyboard for normal typing (like, ever, at all), then imagine how much more powerful you _could_ be if you took the time to learn proper touch-typing technique.
@@TheGuindo thanks, ive always hated home row since my typing teacher always said "no your not doing it the RIGHT WAY" and it just pissed me off since there is no right or wrong way to type imo
@@lmaoeyisdead well, there are certainly _wrong_ ways to type, but you're right that the home row method they teach you in typing class isn't the _only_ correct way.
if you wanna _really_ fuck with your teacher, go into the Windows language settings and change the keyboard layout to Dvorak right before you leave class. I use a Dvorak layout and I always get a kick out of how much it confuses people when they try to use my computer at work.
In my experience, at least in depositions, stenographers will record testimony just to be sure what they've transcribed is correct. Deposition witnesses are also provided transcripts of their testimony to review and correct. But even with all that, many stenographers do an amazing job.
I have never heard of a witness being allowed to "correct" a transcript. They're not exactly a neutral party. The record is the record. And stenographers will records, because why wouldn't you? Low effort and when it pays off it pays off huge. People talk over each other, interrupt, spill coffee on your lap. It only makes sense. That said, the audio is never going to be as good as hearing it the first time, so when the audio isn't clear but your notes are, you trust the notes 10 times out of 10.
@@brasssnacks8413 I only practiced for a few years but I did take a bunch of depositions. I don't recall ever sending a transcript for a witness to review. That may be because I never represented a witness in a deposition. But I've been deposed twice. Once as a college student I was a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit arguing having to pay a mandatory fee to NYPIRG was unconstituional. Many years later I was a plaintiff in a personal injury suit in a NY State court. I had been rear-ended by a garbage truck while I was stopped at red light totalling my car and messing up my back. On both occasions, my lawyer sent me copies of my depositions to review for accuracy. Even the best stenographer could make a mistake. No one is perfect. But if a witness made an admission in a deposition, but "corrected" it by deleting that admission it would become a question of fact for either the judge or jury to determine what had been said in the deposition. The stenographer could testify and any recordings could be entered as evidence.
It really still helps to have that human filter in the room, to make sure people speak one at a time, to know who says what and who accounts for stutters or rambling
Not to mention speech impediments or strong non-standard accents.
My Mom just finished Stenographer/Court Reporter school, I would ask her about this kind of stuff and I always found it interesting when she would tell me, she’s finally a Court Reporter and has just started work, 4 years of Online School and she’s finally done, I’m so proud of her.
Which online school did she go to?
@@fashiharz8584 I can’t remember the name, I’m sorry, but I’ll be sure to ask her if you’d like me to.
@@katylepetsos7512 sure! Please ask her!
@@katylepetsos7512 have you asked her?
@@fashiharz8584 she said the College of Court Reporting
Cicero's wisdom makes me think that he wasn't actually a politician, but a full time writer for fortune cookie makers.
For anyone going "Voice recognition could easily automate this job", it can't, and here's why:
1. Stenographers can correctly transcribe people who speak with accents that aren't American. Until Silicon Valley starts caring about diversity, I don't thing computers will be able to do that.
2. Stenographers can distinguish individual speakers.
3. Stenographers can pick the right homonym. Without understanding the meaning of the words, a computer cannot distinguish homonyms. Maybe GPT-3 could do it, but it would be hard. Technical jargon and puns could make this extra difficult.
4. Stenographers can type with 99.8% accuracy. Even when voice recognition can do the other stuff, it'll take years before it can do it with sufficient reliability that courts and TV broadcasts would be willing to switch to it.
I'm sure it'll be automated eventually, but probably not anytime too soon
"Until Silicon Valley starts caring about diversity"
Yeah not like the Valley is basically infested with ultra left wing liberal computer majors and college dropouts on top of already way above average minority hiring quotas and a diversity agenda they push in pretty much every possible media channel they own.
Like, are you living under a Dwayne Johnson?
Do yourself a favor and read up on the mindset of the tech corporations and their owners in Silicon Valley.
All 4 problems are easily solved by giving everybody a decent quality microphone. You could even use a system which keeps the different audio tracks isolated so in latter review you can mute everybody except whoever you want to listen to, or change their relative volume. Audio files arn't big so you could store backups of loads of them really easily. You also capture everything about the speech and not just the words themselves
On top of that if you REALLY want it transcribed, you can just transcribe it latter without worrying about taking time out of the actual proceedings. And if you let an automatic system transcribe the audio THEN go over it manually like you can with TH-cam it could probably be done a lot faster. Pure auto-transcription is a bad idea, but even a decent quality mic is going to be cheaper then a single paycheck for a stenographer. You could probably pay for the labor to build such a system in a month's wages but even if it's a years you've replaced a running cost with an upfront cost and will save so much money long term
"Until silicon Valley cars about diversity" lol that's the only thing they care about hence bad technology.
Also, to those who just say to store the audio:
- reading transcribed text is faster than listening to audio especially considering you might want to navigate over the text (read some parts multiple times, skip others) and
- transcribed text is much easier to archive than some audio format which won’t be supported by anything in 50 years.
@@CaptNSquared That's great and all, except for when deaf people want to be able to enjoy live TV
My mother is a Stenographer, and I always was surprised by her machines and the "language" she had to type in.
That is extremely fascinating!! I didn't quite get the abbreviated words until I thought of them through animation terms. In 2D hand drawn animation (12-24 individual drawings per 1 second of film/audio) ya kinda breakdown dialogue tracks by sounding out what the words sound like and not how they are spelled. Like that you get how a character's mouth shapes should be since for realism it doesn't translate perfectly (plus there's a 2 frame delay before the sound usually). So "actually" could end up as "auctooallyyyyy" if thats how the voice actor said it. The audience here's "actually", the animator simplifies the sounds to make it easier. If ya animated each sound the mouth would be going completely all over the place
This is also perfect for synthesizing speech in real time, which is not nearly as useless as it might sound at first.