Define real-time transcription in a courtroom.

• A. Post-event review editing.
• B. Creating rough draft transcripts.
• C. Live translation of speech into text as the spoken words occur.
• D. Generating summaries after the fact.

Answer: (C)

Real-time transcription is the immediate conversion of spoken words in the courtroom into written text as they are spoken. A court reporter or realtime captioning system captures what is said—often using a stenotype machine or speech-to-text technology—and displays a live transcript for the judge, attorneys, and others. This happens continuously during proceedings, providing an up-to-the-moment record that can be referred to instantly. It differs from post-event editing, rough drafts created after the fact, or summaries produced later, because those require waiting for recordings to be processed. Real-time transcription focuses on producing a verbatim or near-verbatim text stream in real time, and it’s typically in the same language rather than a translation between languages.