There will also be some crucial differences while similar in
some ways. One important difference is that speech is transcribed by a court
reporter in real time while a transcriptionist has the advantage of replaying
fast verbal dialog and hard to understand language and transcribes records.
Additionally, the two have very different educational requirements.
While the
primary responsibility of a court reporter is really the real time verbatim academic transcription of the dialog taking place in the court room, there are really
some added duties that a he or she may handle based on the judge and the court
room she or he works with
Formal education and licensure or certification is required.
Academic programs vary from two to four years and classes include procedures
and legal terminology, legal research, medical vocabulary, company law, and the
English language, grammar and mechanics. Some states require a state permit
while certificates given by court reporter organizations are accepted by
others. Along with earning continuing education credits these certificates
require the passing of an assessment or tests.
Along with professors, school programs also teach the actual
abilities needed to do the real time transcription that is verbatim. Court
reporters don't use routine computer keyboards to record speech but rather
stenotype machines.
These machines have keys but do not look like the computer
keyboard you are used to using. They will have much fewer keys. Court reporters
type a phonetic code rather than typing out whole words letter by letter. This
enables them to type in the area of 250 - 300 words per minute.
