by Donna E. French
Picture yourself in the midst of a large stadium filled with 70,000 cheering men on a beautiful spring day in Florida with a nice breeze blowing. No, you're not at a Georgia-Florida game, but a Promise Keepers gathering. Now, even though I wasn't sitting in the stadium experiencing all the energy emanating from the crowd, I heard and felt it all from my home in Olathe, Kansas; made possible by modems and telephone lines, while writing live realtime captioning for the hearing-impaired attending the event, my words rolling two lines at a time onto the bottom of the huge Jumbotron that normally housed the scores and statistics of the players on the field. I could only imagine how tall a single letter really was on the screen.
Over the years, I had experienced the incredible impact that PK had not only on the adult men, but the young boys attending their gatherings. The moral compass that PK provided for all religious denominations was incredible, bringing together men of all races and faiths. I had been captioning the Promise Keepers events for quite some time and absolutely loved to provide sound for the hearing-impaired in the audience, but I always undoubtedly ended up asking the question at the conclusion of my session: Why me?
I had been writing a whole morning session with speakers from around the world, for whom English was most certainly their second, or third language. Add to that the wind blowing across the microphones with the fervor of Hurricane Floyd and a slew of foreign languages being spoken at warp speed, and I was completely exhausted, mentally and physically. The last speaker was of Jewish descent and focused on many Jewish words and phrases, all of which I attempted to convey phonetically to the hearing-impaired. Then the speaker proceeded to reminisce about all the Italian phrases his friends in New York had spoken to him regarding character and unity, etc. I only had experience with Italian with the likes of the words "linguini" and "wine," so I was sunk on the Italian front also, but hopefully, again, phonetically spelled out the words for readability. Then came a whole list of German words and names of places from his father's experience in a concentration camp for four years. It was 40 minutes of foreign language torture, but I felt the meaning was conveyed as close to verbatim as was possible.
When the speaker was finished, I realized my body, from all the stress, was in a position likened to "The Great Thinker," with accompanying spasms, muscle aches, and sweat. I had tears in my eyes not only from the sheer difficulty of it all, but also from the powerful content of the speaker's message. After the speaker concluded, Joseph Garlington, the emcee came on the stage to close out the morning session. I was literally praying for a few musical numbers, or, better yet, a call for a lunch break.
Well, Mr. Garlington's first words were:
>> Mr. Garlington: Don't you appreciate the little words that are appearing on the bottom of the screen?
(Then came the realization, "Hey, that's me!)
>> Mr. Garlington: Isn't that neat stuff? Do you see any now? Are there any words up there? Can you see them? I wonder who that is.
(I had two choices here … tell the truth or pass out. I opted for the truth, very deliberately and shakily writing …)
>> Donna French.
>> Mr. Garlington: Are you having a good time typing all of that stuff in?
>> Yes!
(Remember, there are only two lines of text rolling up from the bottom of the screen at a time, so the words are on and then off the screen very rapidly for Mr. Garlington to see as he keeps looking at the audience and then back up to the Jumbotron, so he says …"
>> Mr. Garlington: I can't see it on my screen. What's your name?
(At this point, the whole stadium of 70,000+, having read my previous answer, yells, "DONNA FRENCH!!" and now I'm in the mortified category.)
>> Mr. Garlington: Where are you?
>> Kansas City, Missouri.
(However, I really needed to be on a break. Now there came thousands of "oohs" and "aahhhs" and gasps." Then I couldn't take it anymore and wrote …)
>> You're making me nervous!
>> Mr. Garlington: (Laughing) We celebrate the presence of people who make this all work. I'm going to quit while I'm ahead. Did they type that too?
>> Yes, I did, with the help of God …
At that point, the stadium roared again. Seriously, after that day, it was truly a miracle I didn't faint. I just kept telling myself thank goodness I didn't really know anybody in Florida … or at least I didn't think I did until I received a call at 10 p.m. that same night from my husband's cousin Lou, saying he and a group of friends had been in the audience and couldn't hear the speakers very well because of the high winds that day and the difficulty of the foreign words, so they all had read the captioning throughout the whole day, especially with the last speaker in the morning session who was well-versed in many foreign words. Then when Lou saw my name on the Jumbotron, he had bragged to his buddies saying, "Hey, I know that lady!" They didn't believe him, of course, until Lou reached his home that night and made the call to my home to prove it.
The final chapter to the event happened two weeks later when Lou mailed a "thank-you" card to my home, which I will always treasure, containing the names of the eight men he had traveled to the PK event with, most of whom were firefighters who were nonstop battling the horrible wildfires in Florida that spring of '98, but had all managed to personally sign this card thanking myself and our captioning company for providing out services for the PK event.
It was upon receipt of that card that I truly realized what realtime captioning by court reporters accomplished for the hearing and hearing-impaired. As of this writing, I'm working on completing my bachelor's degree and writing my thesis on captioning, and I have come upon research from Dr. Ross Stuckless of Rochester, New York, who likened realtime captioning to the Rosetta Stone of communication, for it has provided the verbatim visual link to communication, coupled with the auditory aspect of communication. Court reporters continually writing in new arenas and specializing in new terminology will only better solidify globally communication for the disabled, the elderly, and those who are learning English as a second language. As Judy Brentano has stated, "Viewing closed-captioning television is virtually the only cultural experience which hearing and nonhearing members of the same family can share on equal footing."
Everything in our lives is dependent on some form of communication, where we go, what we eat, who we meet, where we seek shelter, when we need to be someplace, etc. I am honored to be a part of the group of court reporters in this country and around the world who provide that communication access for those who are hearing-impaired and hope that through continued educational funding from our government we can continually usher in new professionals into this expanding field.
If you have had an experience with captioning or CART that you would like to share, please e-mail it to Peter Wacht, pwacht@ncrahq.org