10 Tips to Understand Witnesses with Accents

Coping with witnesses who understand and speak English, yet carry heavy accents, can make for a stressful assignment. Here are some stress-reduction tips that are sure to make it easier:

1. Prior to going on the record, ask all counsel and the witness if you may place your laptop in front of the witness. If counsel agrees, take a minute to explain to everyone that by doing so the witness will be able to read what you heard him or her say, so that if the witness sees something that isn’t what they intended, they can clarify it immediately.
2. Inform counsel and the witness that you’ll need them to clarify at a break or at the end of the proceeding anything you may have translated incorrectly because it was unfamiliar to you or you didn’t understand the witness.
3. Turn your computer’s audio backup on. And if your steno machine has audio backup capability, turn that on as well.
4. Put on headphones that are either connected to the laptop that is sitting in front of the witness, or to a multi-directional mic also placed strategically in front of the witness.
5. Write exactly what you hear – even if that means you’re writing something that doesn’t sound like a word.
6. If you write something that doesn’t sound right, mark it and go back to it either at a break or after counsel’s examination.
7. Try not to interrupt the proceeding. Since you’ve explained that you’ll probably have some questions, with everyone present either on breaks or at the end of the proceeding, you’ll be able to scan from one quick mark to the next and ask your questions.
8. As you scan from question to question, give everyone present the opportunity to read and listen to the word or words you were unsure of, and replace each phonetically spelled word before you leave that assignment.
9. Do not insert nominatives the witness does not use or try to “fix” the witness’ syntax. Everyone present can hear that the witness’ English is broken. As a verbatim reporter, you are sworn to write every word spoken, not to interpret what you believe should have been spoken.
10. Here are some clues that may help you decipher what your witness is saying:

• “W’s” may be pronounced as “v’s,” and “th’s” may be pronounced as “t’s,” as discussed in the Frankfurt International School’s “Guide to Learning English.”
• Long “e’s” may be pronounced as short “i’s,”as mentioned in this Yahoo Answers post
• “S’s” and “z’s” may be confused, as is highlighted in this Google Groups forum.
• “L’s” may be mispronounced as “r’s,” and vice versa, as mentioned in this English Grammar4U online lesson.
• “S’s” may be pronounced as “sh’s,” as discussed in this ESL Pedagogy article.
• “H’s” may be dropped, as focused on in this Dialect Blog post.
• “T’s” may be pronounced as “d’s,” and vice versa, as differentiated in this English Pronunciation T & D video.
• “J’s” may be pronounced as “h’s,” as discussed in this Colorin Colorado article.
• “Ow’s” may be pronounced as “oh’s,” as mentioned in this IBM WebSphere English pronunciation article.
• Short “e’s” may be confused with short “i’s,” as highlighted in this American English Pronunciation lesson.
• Long “oh’s” may be pronounced as short “o’s” and “v’s” may be pronounced as “b’s,” as discussed in this ESL Pedagogy lesson.

Reporting witnesses with heavy accents isn’t easy, but using your laptop, audio backup, headphones and quick marks, and listening for the troublesome vowels and sounds listed above will certainly give you a leg up.