Robinson stenographer earns national recognition, certification
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During her early days as a court reporter, Karyn Valeriano found that two years of training at the Community College of Allegheny County didn’t help her nerves when a couple of attorneys started arguing and talking over top of one another.
“As I gained more experience and confidence, I realized I just needed to stay calm, rely on my training and produce the cleanest record possible,” said Valeriano, 53, of Robinson.
Today, Valeriano’s history of producing clean copy has been recognized by the National Court Reporters Association. She’s earned her Certified Realtime Captioner certification that acknowledges her high quality work in real-time writing in both broadcast and Communication Access Realtime Translation, or CART, situations.
CART is often defined as live event captioning, which relies on real-time reporting to produce an immediate transcript of the spoken word, using a stenography machine connected to a computer.
Valeriano graduated from CCAC with an associate’s degree in court reporting. She has the ability to transcibe 225 words per minute. She was immediately hired by a large freelance court reporting firm in Pittsburgh, mostly attending depositions, exams under oath and other legal proceedings.
“I transitioned to live captioning about nine years ago, captioning various sports, news, weather, shopping, etc.,” she said. “These types of shows require a good deal of prep work, staying on top of names in the news and trending stories.”
If she is captioning a football game, for example, Valeriano said she will print out player rosters in advance and making sure the names are programmed into her computer’s dictionary so they translate properly during live television.
“Then I watch the game at the same time as the consumer, using my steno machine to take down everything that’s being said,” Valeriano said. “Each network has a format I must follow regarding where captions appear on the screen, if I need to identify the speaker, and other special instructions.”
The advent of cable television caused Valeriano’s industry to grow exponentially.
“Have you noticed how many sports and news channels there are now?”
In addition, with the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990, all broadcaster, cable companies and satellite providers must, by law, provide closed captioning for consumers.
Over her career, Valeriano has captioned both the winter and summer Olympic Games, ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “The View,” along with championship football games, Wimbledon tennis matches and the NBA Finals.
“The biggest challenge is keeping up with the ever-changing technology,” she said.
During the pandemic, Valeriano has been engaged in more CART work, where she provides real-time captioning for individual consumers.
“It would be, say, a student in a virtual class or a Zoom teleconference,” she said. “There’s been an explosion of online events since the pandemic. … I’ve captioned everything from church services to a meeting of Native American tribal leaders to TED Talks and Microsoft events.”
The Certified Realtime Captioner certification was implemented in 2015 to provide NCRA members with a higher level of training and the resources they need to transition to providing captioning services. The certification reflects the combined training of the previous certifications Certified Broadcast Captioner (CBC) and Certified CART Provider (CCP), and was developed to increase real-time proficiency and certify more individuals in providing real-time services.
To earn certification, candidates must complete a captioning workshop and a skills exam including real-time dictation of 180 words per minute on literary matter.
Valeriano said the relatively unknown and unique job “has afforded me a long and rewarding career. Jobs in this industry are in demand if you’re prepared to work hard and continuously improve your craft.”