Once
you’ve made the decision to become a captioner, the majority of your time will
be spent practicing with the TV. Here
are a few tips to not only become familiar with the way people speak on TV, but
how to build your confidence and not feel like you’re getting “killed.”
When
you first sit down to practice with the TV, I suggest choosing a program that
you are familiar with, that you’ve watched on a semi-regular basis, such as your
local news or cable news like MSNBC or CNN.
Stay away from talk shows and sports programs, as they are extremely
fast. This may seem obvious to some, but
local news usually airs at 5:00 p.m., 5:30 p.m., and 6:00 p.m., followed by
national news (World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Nightly News with Brian
Williams, The Evening News with Dan Rather, ABC, NBC, and CBS respectively) at
6:30 p.m. And of course, 10:00 p.m. and
11:00 p.m. news is also local. Cable
news programs are usually 24 hours a day.
Many
local news programs are not captioned.
Some use teleprompter captions.
This is easily detectable when they switch to a reporter in the field
and the captions suddenly stop. I
suggest taping the program with the captions on so you can compare your writing
with the captioner's. But do turn the
captions off while you're practicing.
Save the comparisons for afterwards, because it is way too distracting. For what it’s worth, I recommend practicing
with MSNBC, because I know the company that captions it has very capable and
qualified captioners. In the arena of
local news, I can also recommend Fox 5 WNYW in New York
and UPN9 WWOR in New York
First,
tape a half hour of the program, watch it first and jot down any names that
come up, including reporters’ and anchors’ names. Create a job dictionary for
that program, because you don't want all those names in your main dictionary.
However, down the road you will discover many of the cable news reporters
(MSNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel) and
national network news reporters (ABC, NBC, and CBS) often switch networks. So those names I keep in my main
dictionary. But if there's a man who
committed some awful crime in your area that's not going to make headlines
anywhere else, you can put that name in your job dictionary. I also have what’s called a “Current” job
dictionary that I put names of people in the news today but won’t necessarily
be talked about three years from now.
You have to be careful, though, because a big case today may die down
for a couple of years and then come back in the news at the time of trial or
parole, etc.
Next
after you watch the tape and prep from it, then write the first ten minutes
straight through. Don't stop to edit or
add anything. After that you can edit or add names or words to your
dictionary. Then write the same ten
minutes over again. Continue with that
pattern until you feel comfortable with that ten minutes. Don’t be surprised if you don’t feel
comfortable for a long time. It’s
possible it could take days, weeks, or months depending on how much time you
devote to this exercise. Once you do
feel comfortable, move on to the next ten-minute segment and repeat the process
until you've finished the whole half-hour program. At that point, start from the beginning and
write the entire 30 minutes without stopping (except to fast-forward through
the commercials).
Don’t
be discouraged at how difficult and awkward it is writing the news, or any TV
program, because they talk differently than we were trained to write. We were trained to write very monotone
speaking patterns, back and forth, Q & A.
And once you start working, you get used to the way lawyers speak (and
witnesses for that matter). This is very different. At first it is hard to get a rhythm
going. Do not get discouraged. It just takes practice to retrain your ear. In time it will become second nature.
Next time I’ll talk about dictionary
building in a little more detail. After
practicing just a few times with the TV, you’ll begin to notice how much of the
English language we don’t use as court reporters.
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