Posted: Jan 25th, 2016 - 1:08 pm In Reply to:captioning - anon
I have been working for a court reporting firm for 23 years now. Started working here when I was in school to become a reporter. I went for 2 1/2 years and was told that I needed probably another 2 1/2 years to get up to speed. I quit half way through. Trust me, it is NOTHING like MT work. It is an entire different language you must learn and then be able to hear what is spoken and then translate it to steno and write it at 225 words per minute with 4 people speaking. It can be done but the drop out rate is extremely high in these schools. Years ago they had classes just for scopists but not sure if they are around any more. Closed mask (stenomask) is very rare to see anymore, I think the military still uses it. We have reporters making 6 figures a year and others just starting out at 22K a year. If you only want to scope notes for a reporter you have to learn their theory of shorthand (and there are many) and buy the software that works with your reporters software(pricey). Then you will need to have legal terminology, medical and English to get going. There is not a huge amount of money in scoping as many reporters pay 17 - 23 cents per line. As far as going digital? I know that it has been kicked around for years but no one trusts the digital as compared to a human as the speech needs to be 98.7% accurate and digital just can not do that in realtime as a reporter can do. Good luck to you if you decide to go to Court Reporting school, it is a LONG and HARD road as well as expensive, but it is worth it in the end.
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