CART/Realtime/Captioning Overview
CART (Computer Assisted Realtime Translation)
This service is provided by a trained court reporter or realtime reporter who has taken many years of training, learning the steno machine. The court reporter must be able to listen to the spoken word and write on the steno machine at over 200 words per minute. The court reporter writes the verbatim spoken word with the text appearing on a computer monitor, television, or projection screen.
CART is usually used by the hearing impaired, deaf and late deafened people. This method enables people with a hearing disability to read everything that is said. It can also be used for people who do not speak English well. People who lost their hearing after acquiring spoken language or were raised orally may not know or be fluent in sign language and, therefore, need CART services.
CART is sometimes used in the court system for a hard-of-hearing juror, plaintiff or defendant. It can also be used in conventions, meetings, schools, and other proceedings for people with a hearing loss. If used in a school setting, this allows the student to be able to view the spoken word while it streams across the computer screen and also allows the student to view notes after class as a rough-copy disk is provided.
CART can also be used for a hearing impaired individual at the workplace for interviews, meetings, conventions, et cetera.
REALTIME REPORTING
Realtime reporting is when the reporter writes verbatim what is spoken and the transcription streams wirelessly across the lawyer's computer screen during discovery, trial, hearings, or conference. All transcripts received this way are uncertified transcripts because it has not been edited or proofread. Certified transcripts are available following realtime on a regular, expedited or daily basis.
The court reporter and parties must have certain software to be able to accept the reporter’s feed directly to their laptop. There also must be internet and/or wireless internet for the parties to connect. Interruptions can happen due to internet interruption and/or feed loss or computer problems, which would require the proceedings to recess in order to reset.
The court reporter obtains information prior to any proceedings in order that he or she can put phonetic strokes into the dictionary for certain words and phrases to come across the screen in English.
The conduct of the participants greatly impacts the realtime translation. If the parties are talking over one another, if parties are speaking too softly or too quickly, or if spellings of words and names are not provided prior to the proceeding, phonetic spellings or untranslates or mistranslates will appear on the screen. All parties must speak clearly, respect the reporter, and slow down so that a proper record or proper word-for-word translation can be provided.
CLOSED CAPTIONING
Closed captions are captions that appear only when special equipment called a telecaption decoder is used. Closed captioning is typically used for television broadcast and movie videotapes. A closed caption decoder is equipment that decodes the captioning signal and causes captions to appear on the screen.
Penticton Realtime Reporting
