A transcript is a
written record of spoken language. In
court
A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in acco ...
proceedings, a transcript is usually a record of all decisions of the
judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...
, and the spoken
arguments
An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...
by the
litigant
-
A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil acti ...
s'
lawyer
A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solicit ...
s. A related term used in the United States is
docket, not a full transcript. The transcript is expected to be an exact and unedited record of every spoken word, with each speaker indicated. Such a record was originally made by court
stenographers who used a form of
shorthand
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''s ...
abbreviation to write as quickly as people spoke. Today, most
court reporter
A court reporter, court stenographer, or shorthand reporter is a person whose occupation is to capture the live testimony in proceedings using a stenographic machine, thereby transforming the proceedings into an official certified transcript ...
s use a
specialized machine with a
phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
key system, typing a key or key combination for every sound a person utters. Many courts worldwide have now begun to use
digital recording
In digital recording, an audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is saved to a storage ...
systems. The recordings are archived and are sent to court reporters or
transcribers only when a transcript is requested. Many US transcripts are
indexed by
Deposition Source
Deposition may refer to:
* Deposition (law), taking testimony outside of court
* Deposition (politics), the removal of a person of authority from political power
* Deposition (university), a widespread initiation ritual for new students practiced ...
so that they may be searched by legal professionals via the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
. Transcripts may be available publicly or to a restricted group of persons; a fee may be charged.
Types
A transcript is also any written record of a speech, debate or discussion.
Rush transcripts are transcript requests that can be processed and mailed, or picked up, within short time of the request (usually 24 hours or less), provided there are no extenuating circumstances (such as unpaid bills). These expedited transcripts normally cost much more than regular transcripts.
Check against delivery
Sometimes, the first page of a transcript will have the words "''Check Against Delivery''" stamped across it, which means that the transcript is not the legal representation of the speech, but rather only the audio delivery is regarded as the official record. This is better explained in the French version of the message – ''Seul le texte prononcé fait foi'', literally "Only the spoken text is faithful".
Conversely, it may be that the actual given speech differs from the way the speaker intended, or that it contains extra information that is not pertinent to the central points of the speech and that the speaker does not want to be left as a permanent record.
Speech by President Barroso at the University of Cape Town
''(Example of a transcript with the "Check Against Delivery" stamp)'', Europa.EU, 19 Jul 2013. Retrieved 24 Jul 2013.
See also
* Rough ASCII
A rough ASCII, uncertified rough draft, uncertified unedited rough draft, realtime unedited rough draft, uncertified copy, or simply RASCII ( ) is the rough draft version of a transcript created by a court reporter, usually of a legal proceeding. ...
* Certificate of disposition A certificate of disposition is a New York court document that indicates the current status of a case or its final disposition.
Availability
Certificates of Disposition are available from the clerk's office in either the Criminal Court or the Supr ...
* Deposition (law)
A deposition in the law of the United States, or examination for discovery in the law of Canada, involves the taking of sworn, out-of-court oral testimony of a witness that may be reduced to a written transcript for later use in court or for dis ...
* Discovery (law)
Discovery, in the law of common law jurisdictions, is a pre-trial procedure in a lawsuit in which each party, through the law of civil procedure, can obtain evidence from the other party or parties by means of discovery devices such as inte ...
* Transcription (linguistics)
Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of spoken language in written form. The source can either be utterances (''speech'' or ''sign language'') or preexisting text in another writing system.
Transcription sh ...
* Minutes
Minutes, also known as minutes of meeting (abbreviation MoM), protocols or, informally, notes, are the instant written record of a meeting or hearing. They typically describe the events of the meeting and may include a list of attendees, a stat ...
* Witness
In law, a witness is someone who has knowledge about a matter, whether they have sensed it or are testifying on another witnesses' behalf. In law a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, e ...
References
{{reflist
Court reporting
Legal documents