Introducing Norma Miller

Norma Miller is an international captioner and as such is the owner of the captioning firm White Coat Captioning. Through her company, Norma and her team caption live conferences, seminars, classes, events, and more around the world including more WordCamps than we can count. Norma calls Vermont her home where she lives with her husband and her Yorkie, Mr. Jefferies.

Show Notes

Website | White Coat Captioning

Website | White Coat Captioning UK

Twitter | @whitecoatcapxg

Episode Transcript

Liam: This is Hallway Chats, where we talk with some of the unique people in and around WordPress.

Tara: Together, we meet and chat with folks you may not know about in our community.

Liam: With our guests, we’ll explore stories of living – and of making a living with WordPress.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 51.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Norma Miller. Norma is an international captioner and as such is the owner of the captioning firm White Coat Captioning. Through her company, Norma and her team caption live conferences, seminars, classes, events, and more around the world including more WordCamps than we can count. Norma calls Vermont her home where she lives with her husband and her Yorkie, Mr. Jefferies. Welcome, Norma. Glad to have you here.

Norma: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Liam: Hi, Norma. Thanks for joining us today.

Norma: Hi, Liam.

Liam: Good to see you and to hear you. Tell us a little bit more about yourself, if you would, please?

Norma: Well, I’m a native Vermonter, if I can claim that because I guess, you have to be something like six generations or something in order for anyone to think you’re really native in Vermont. I’ve lived here all my life, with the exception of a couple of years when I lived in London, which is really strange because I come from a town of around 200 people, originally where I was born, and the next place I lived was the major metropolis of London. I started my career as a court reporter way back, probably before many of the listeners were born. My career has evolved over the years to now being a captioning firm owner.

Tara: How did you make the transition from court reporter to captioning? Are they similar in terms of the technology that they use?

Norma: Yeah, the basic skill is the same and yes, my career evolved– in the early ’90s, the BBC in London was recruiting for Americans to come to London to become captioners. They did this big recruitment process thing and I applied sort of on a lark. And, oh my goodness, I got the job. They sent me to the National Captioning Institute in Washington DC to be retrained because when you’re a court reporter, or at least in those days when you were a court reporter, you were just writing things down and you would transcribe them later. So you could make the changes or edits or things that you’ve got wrong later at your own pace. When you’re a captioner, everything has to come out readable and clear on the first try. Things like homonyms used to be written all the same and then you would later transcribe you’re, your, your, you are. You would know in the context what would be the right way to transcribe it. When you’re writing for real-time or captioning, you have to write those on a stenography machine in a different way so the computer can translate it correctly. Because, as we know, computers are very literal. That’s one of the challenges of transitioning.

Liam: How long did that train take in terms of the length of the class?