Day 046 - 04 Nov 94 - Page 49
1 Miss Foot, who permanently astounds me at the way she gets
2 things down.
3
4 What concerns me is this: I have looked through the
5 transcript or some of the transcripts, and where Miss Foot
6 has done her best, but what she gets down is not obviously
7 English, just for a couple of words or something like that,
8 clearly someone either has a recollection or listens to the
9 tape, and it is corrected for the transcript.
10
11 Where what goes down on the Case View transcript is
12 perfectly good English and will appear to make perfectly
13 good sense, but is not what was actually said, i.e.,
14 "important" for "healthy", or -- this was trivial -- but
15 yesterday afternoon, I said "an institution like
16 McDonald's", and it goes down as "institute", that is a
17 totally trivial matter but, just as an example, that is
18 sometimes not corrected. I can see why, because to the
19 person who is perfecting it, it is English, it makes sense
20 and, therefore, there is no need to listen to the tape. I
21 have this faint concern. We can get "healthy",
22 "important", "institution", "institute", but I hope that
23 some check is actually being made ultimately.
24
25 MR. RAMPTON: I have certainly noticed one or two things --
26 I cannot remember what they are -- when I have been reading
27 them, only in a random sort of way, I am afraid -- I have
28 not been systematic about it -- where, actually, it is
29 quite important, because, although the sense is English, it
30 is sometimes the contrary to what I remember having said.
31
32 MR. JUSTICE BELL: All I am doing is raising it at the moment.
33 You must do the same. If you see something in the
34 transcript which you think is somewhere near what you said
35 or a witness said, but you do not think is right, you can
36 query it, and ultimately, if it is thought to be important,
37 it can be checked back against the central tape. Do you
38 understand?
39
40 MR. RAMPTON: Your Lordship and I have just received a joint
41 rocket from Miss Foot because, apparently, everything is
42 checked against the tape and it is not, as it were, brushed
43 over.
44
45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is totally trivial, and I am not worried
46 about this, but I definitely said "institution" and it has
47 gone down as "institute". Perhaps I was speaking
48 indistinctly. I am not concerned that that was inaccurate;
49 it is merely to check that-----
50
51 MR. RAMPTON: I have to say that I think that where, from the
52 context, the sense of the sentence, though it makes
53 perfectly good English, is taken in isolation, it is
54 plainly wrong.
55
56 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You can see that a "not" must have been
57 missed out, or something of that kind.
58
59 MR. RAMPTON: Overall, I am not sure that it makes a lot of
60 difference. I have made my own corrections as I have gone
