MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD
VOTE on Thursday, JULY 29TH,
2004 from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
AT THE NCRA CONVENTION
Chicago, Illinois
ARE STENOMASKERS/VOICE WRITERS IN OUR
FUTURE?
By Shirley Houston, CSR, RPR, CLVS, FAPR, DSA
We have a vote coming up on July 29, 2004 to give reporters the
opportunity to cast their vote on whether or not to let stenomaskers/voice
writers become members in the National Court Reporters Association. I would urge each of you to plan to go to
Chicago to vote because that vote may shape your future.
So many people are wondering what a stenomasker and a voice writer
is. Stenomask is a mask invented back
in the 1940s by Horace L. Webb, the father of stenomasking. In the last few years, a method known as voice
writing has appeared on the scene.
While not perfected enough at this time to become competition to the
realtime of the machine writer, some think this may have potential in future
years when it is perfected.
The stenomask method in Texas is tested by the CRCB the same as the
machine. Those that pass the test by
the stenomask/voice writing method will lose their license if they try to
practice by the machine method. By the
same token, the machine writer may not practice by the stenomask method in Texas
or they will lose their license. This
stenomask method is sometimes known also as oral stenography.
Neither the National Court Reporters Association, the Texas Court
Reporters Association, or the Houston Court Reporters Association allow either
the stenomask or voice writing method in their associations since they are
dedicated to machine and pen only.
The
stenomaskers/voice writers have their own association, which is called the
National Verbatim Reporters Association (NVRA). It at one time was named the National Stenomaskers
Association. The association asks that
all their members be called voice writers, whether they use a typist or the
translating computer. NVRA is an association
that has 700 to 1,000 members. There
are approximately 10,000 stenomaskers/voice writers in the United States, and
they are still more commonly known as stenomaskers. There are very few that practice with the realtime method because
the equipment just isn’t as perfected as it should be.
National Court Reporters Association is having a vote on the afternoon
of July 29, 2004 to give members a chance to decide their future. They are planning on allowing both methods,
stenomask and voice writing, into the association if the members vote for
it. The members voted this down a
little over three years ago.
WHAT IS THE DEFINTION OF STENOMASK AND VOICE
WRITING?
STENOMASK is a method whereby the court reporter would speak into a
mask, and it would go into one track of a tape recorder, and the open mike
would record on the second track. When
using this method, THE TRANSCRIPT MUST BE TYPED. The person using the mask is known as a stenomasker.
VOICE WRITER is the method by which the reporter would speak into a
mask and the voice could be translated into English. This is equivalent to the machine writer using CAT.
VOICE WRITER WITH REALTIME would be akin to the machine writers using
realtime, except the voice writers’ software and hardware are not nearly as
perfected as the machine writers’ software and hardware. Very few voice writers are capable of doing
this.
TCRA is currently holding a survey on their Web site, www.tcra_online.com, to allow you to
vote on whether you think stenomaskers/voice writers should be allowed to be
members of NCRA. This is only a vote to
let TCRA know how the reporters of Texas feel about this issue. IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A VOICE ON THIS
AMENDMENT, YOU MUST BE PRESENT IN CHICAGO TO VOTE.
SAME SONG, SECOND VERSE
Two years and some months ago, if you remember, we had a vote on this
in New Orleans at the NCRA convention.
The vote was 80% to deny membership to stenomaskers/voice writers, and
20% wanted to allow them. Even though
the members made it loud and clear what their wishes were, the National Court
Reporters Association Board of Directors has decided that the members were not
well enough informed; and, therefore, this is being brought up again.
Looking back in history, you will find this has been brought up many
times over the years and voted down each time at the Board level. In fact, the Board voted against it three
years ago. So why would the Board want
this if they voted it down only three years ago? They have reasons that they feel are valid. Those that oppose it feel they have very
good reasons why this should be defeated.
Listed below are the TOP 10 REASONS FOR AND AGAINST why we should or
should not let stenomaskers/voice writers join NCRA. This is definitely a same song, second verse issue. The question is: If we let them in, is it going to be better or is it going to be
worse?
REASONS FOR AND
AGAINST ADMITTING STENOMASKERS/VOICE WRITERS INTO NCRA
NO. 1
FOR: NCRA should let
stenomaskers/voice writers in the association so that NCRA can control all
methods of court reporting and assure comparable measures of education and
competence between methods by having the same educational and certification
standards.
AGAINST: NCRA needs to stay an
association for machine writers and pen writers because it is the only
association that machine writers have that protects their interests such as
threats against their replacement in the courts by electronic recording and in
some instances perhaps by stenomasking/voice writers. Voice writers have replaced machine writers in some courts
because they were willing to take salaries lower than those the machine writers
could work for. The machine writers
have higher educational standards. It
is the job of NVRA, the stenomaskers/voice writers association, to set their
standards and certifications.
NO. 2
FOR: NCRA will
be the leader in setting educational standards for stenomaskers/voice writers
as well as machine and pen.
AGAINST: NCRA will have very
little control over stenomaskers/voice writers. Becoming an NCRA-approved school is voluntary. The voice writers have their own
association, and they can train and certify their own members with their own
money, and not expect the machine writers to pay.
NO. 3
FOR: NCRA could help meet the
shortages in the court reporting profession.
AGAINST: NCRA will not help
meet this unless they spend a lot of money that machine members have donated
and paid in dues in order to help the machine writing profession. So far most voice writing schools have been
failing. Numbers we hear are usually
from six to nine members in some of these voice-writing programs. The voice writers are growing in very small
numbers. The only way NCRA could help
meet the shortages is to help the voice writers get out of school faster,
thereby causing machine writers to become discouraged and drop out. Courts and freelance firms could, in years
to come, be forced to hire voice writers because NCRA chose to push the
stenomasker/voice writing method.
NO.
4
FOR: NCRA was once a pen organization, but they
let the machine writers in. So since
the pen writers let the machine writers in, the machine writers should let the
stenomaskers/voice writers in the association.
AGAINST: What they have
forgotten to mention is that the pen writers did not let the machine writers in
until they felt they had to. There
aren’t very many pen writers left today because the machine writers took
over. Will the machine writers suffer
the same fate by letting the stenomaskers/voice writers come into the
association and helping finance their rise to the top?
NO.
5
FOR: NCRA has demonstrated
voice writing a number of times, and the words do come out in English. They also have presented a number of
seminars and seem to really think this is the way everyone should vote.
AGAINST: Voice-to-text is in
its beginning stages. NCRA has shown
demonstrations on voice writing a number of times. They are always canned presentations. If they really want to show voice writing, we should put their
best against our best and see how well they do. NCRA and the voice writers have refused thus far to let this
happen. Of course, this amendment would
let the voice writers that still type as well as the voice-to-text method in
NCRA.
NCRA has presented a number of seminars on voice writing and stenomasking;
however, upon close review, you will find that in these seminars there is only
one side of the voice writer/stenomasker presented. The complete panel will be for voice writers and no one opposing
it. That is very unfair considering the
membership voted this down by an 80% vote against stenomaskers/voice writers to
a 20% vote just a little over two years ago.
One member at the firm owners’ meeting dictated to a voice writer at
about 160 words per minute. He found
that words that were repeated did not come out on the screen at all. This would mean the voice writer would have
to relisten to the audio to make sure every word was there.
NO. 6
FOR: NCRA is not doing this for dues dollars. It would only bring in $200,000 extra if
they got all to join.
AGAINST: It is probably true
that NCRA is not doing this for dues dollars.
NCRA is doing this so they can control the profession and put us under
one umbrella. However, to effectively
control the entire profession, NCRA would eventually have to admit electronic
recording and video as members since that is used in courtrooms today as a
manner of making the record. The
potential dues dollars would not be $200,000 as members of the NCRA board have
stated but they could be $2,000,000 if all voice writers decided to join since
there are approximately 10,000 estimated in the United States. NCRA would have to spend a lot more than the
dues dollars that voice writers would bring in order to bring them up to the
educational standards NCRA believes they need.
NO.
7
FOR: The voice writers are coming, and we need to
accept them NOW.
AGAINST: The same story was given three years ago when the voice writers
were trying to gain admittance to NCRA.
They were extremely excited about how many voice writers would be turned
out with their new voice writing school at Houston Community College. Since that time that school has closed their
voice-writing program. Other schools
have opened up and failed, or are about to fail. They usually only have six to nine students at most. These schools mislead potential students
because the stenomask is not the preferred method in most states in the United
States.
This is not a time to embrace voice writers
when machine schools now have an increase in enrollment. This means the machine writers will be able
to meet the needs of any shortages in the very near future. It is estimated that the voice writing
method is ten to 15 years behind the machine method. Will they ever catch up?
No one knows the answer. They
will definitely catch up faster if they have NCRA members’ money to help them
catch up.
NO. 8
FOR: Voice writers can pass tests better than
machine writers.
AGAINST: This is probably true
because a person has been taught to use their voice since childhood. The tests are only five minutes long, and a
voice writer can speak that long without difficulty.
NO. 9
FOR: It seems to appear if one
is to believe recent articles in the JCR and panel discussions, that most
members are supporting this amendment.
AGAINST: Most members do not
appear to be supporting this amendment change; however, only the voices of the
members that attend the NCRA Convention will count because those are the only
ones that can vote. As you will notice,
the poll conducted by NCRA was slanted by asking a question of whether you
thought accuracy or the method was the most important. Most people, including judges, answered that
the accuracy was the most important.
NCRA then took that to mean that members and judges did not care what
method the transcript was produced.
They have given this survey as one of the reasons for bringing this
amendment forward. Of course, if it
didn’t matter what method, that would really mean it would not matter if it was
audio, video, stenomask, voice writer, or machine.
NO. 10
FOR: NCRA states that the Board, supported by research by the NCRA
Future Group,
believes realtime is the present and the future of the profession. Research by NCRA’s Blue Ribbon Commission
indicates that reporting by voice recognition has the potential to rival
stenographic realtime in terms of quality.
Therefore, the Board of NCRA believes that NCRA should represent all
reporters with the capacity to provide immediate voice-to-text
translation. The Blue Ribbon Commission
found that the time and effort needed to master realtime reporting by voice is
similar to the time and effort needed to master stenographic realtime.
AGAINST: NCRA is encouraging
its members to think they would only let voice writers that do voice-to-text in
this association. That is not
true. NCRA, through this amendment, IS
ASKING THE MEMBERS TO VOTE IN THE OLD TYPE STENOMASK METHOD, WHICH IS A MASK
WITH A TAPE RECORDER AND A TYPIST, as well as the new voice-to-text method.
The Blue Ribbon Commission did not consider the stenomask method at all
in their report because it is considered an antiquated method in today’s
advanced technological world. They only
considered realtime voice- to-text. The
NCRA Board decided that both methods should be included. There is no proof to date that voice
recognition will rival the stenographic method.
The voice recognition software still has many problems, including
leaving words out that were said by the reporter. When one word is translated on voice writing, unlike the machine
mistranslation, it can cause many words in a sentence to be wrong. The sentence can become unreadable. An example of this is as follows:
SENTENCE: “I have got to have this day off for my birthday.”
MACHINE WRITER misstrokes (HEUS for THEUS). It would translate “I have got to have his day off for my
birthday.”
VOICE WRITER: “I’ve got to have the stay off for my birthday,” or,
"I’ve got to have the stay offer my birthday.” (This is when the software can’t understand the word the voice
writer is saying.)
The questions you may need to ask yourself after reading the for and
against of stenomaskers/voice writers are:
(1) Do you want to have an organization
that represents machine writers throughout the United States? The stenomaskers/voice writers have their
association, which is NVRA. The
electronic recording people have their association, which is AAERT. If the membership does not vote against the
stenomasker/voice methods, we will no longer have NCRA as the voice for the
machine writers. They will then have
other masters to serve.
(2) Do you want NCRA to spend dues dollars on
the voice writing schools to help them be equal with the machine writer, or
would you like to continue to enjoy having the competitive edge by the money
from NCRA being spent on education that would help machine writers?
(3) Do you want to accept a method that was not
even accepted by NCRA
50-plus years ago?
If you do not want the above three (3)
things, your answer should be NO to the voice writer amendment.
Many remember the vote at NCRA three years ago about whether we should
or should not allow stenomaskers/voice writers into the national
association. It was voted 80% against
letting the stenomaskers/voice writers into the association. NCRA is now coming forward with yet another
vote to try to override the vote of the members in New Orleans. In the first vote in New Orleans, Texans
were overwhelmingly against letting the stenomaskers/voice writers in the
association.
Please do not accept this article written by me as the final word. Check out the facts. Be careful when checking the facts, however,
because there are erroneous facts that have been given that have been printed
in the JCR and stated on the Forum.
Visit www.NVRA.org that represents
the voice writer. Visit The Forum at www.NCRAonline.org. Be certain you know who is expressing their
opinions because many on the Forum are not members and do not have a vote. You will find vendors, those that sell
software, stenomaskers, voice writers, and supporters of voice writers. Most people lurk and don’t write. There is a silent majority that will decide
the outcome of this vote.
REMEMBER: This amendment will
offer membership to approximately 9,900 stenomaskers who still have their work
typed. It will also offer membership to
approximately 100 voice writers who may be writing voice-to-text but still not
to the perfection of the machine writers.
Be knowledgeable. Make up your
mind how you want to vote, and then make your reservations for Chicago. Encourage all your friends to attend as
well. It is up to you, the members of
NCRA, to cast your vote the way you want your future to go. This vote will be a deciding factor. YOUR FUTURE IS IN YOUR HANDS.
I look forward to seeing you in Chicago.
If you have any other questions concerning this issue, please call
Shirley Houston at: (713) 739-1400 or
e-mail: houstondepos@earthlink.net.