Re: VMs: Re: entropy, shorthand systems, gallows characters

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

28/03/2005 11:57:32 AM, "Wayne Durden" <wdurden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


>I
>believe the captain's language was Egyptian but can't say for certain, it
>was about 12 years ago...

>If anyone has specific info on the prevailing methods of stenographic
>recording by modern court reporters, I would be interested to know if the
>prevailing methods taught would enable one to plunk down an "ignorant
>American court reporter" into a German or French deposition

No, absolutely not. Even though English is not so far phonetically from
German or French as it is from Egyptian. The process would be a headache
for the stenotypist (and not a metaphorical headache, a real one)
and another headache for the translator. I have a personal example.
When I did my PhD on the Sakao language, before I had even started
analysing the language, I taped a short text and later sat down to
transcribe it phonetically. I remember this segment: [lungur könvi].
Later, once I had figured out the phonetics of the language and could
speak it a little, I went back to that tape. What I had heard 
[lungur könvi] was in fact [...vârkön vé]. And I was fresh out of a
3-month intensive course in taking down and analyzing unwritten,
unknown language. And Sakao had roughly the same vowels as 
French, which should have helped a lot, but did not.
Imagine Egyptian Arabic, half the consonants of which are
totally unlike those of English!


So, that is why a stenotypist would have no chance whatsoever of
getting it even remotely right. And I strongly suspect that, after
only a few minutes, everything will sound to him like confusing 
gibberish.

> and although the
>court reporter of course wouldn't be able to prepare the final transcript in
>German or French language, would the readback by the court reporter (or
>better yet, a readback by another reporter of the same school) sound much
>like German or French at the end of the deposition?

No again. Only if the reporter knew French or German might it sound
like French or German. 




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