Brigitte Gradischnik-Schanner.

Welcome during the IPRS Meeting – Vienna 24th July 2005.

Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed colleagues and participants of the 45^th Intersteno Congress!

I am pleased that this year’s Intersteno Congress takes place in Vienna, the last Intersteno Congress in Austria’s wonderful capital took place in 1959, which is rather a long time ago.

First, I would like to introduce myself to you: My name is Brigitte Gradischnik-Schanner. I have belonged to the Official Report Department of the Austrian parliament for 32 years; it seems to be I have been here for ages and I am, so to speak, a stenographic fossil. Since 1994 I am head of this department. Consequently I have been a witness to a terrific development during all these years: In the beginning there were no technical resources at all, later we made use of different types of tape recorders in addition to our notes in shorthand and nowadays we have a digital speech-recording system in operation.

 

But unfortunately the number of parliamentary reporters is getting less and less. Our department consists of ten parliamentary reporters in the permanent staff and five colleagues working freelance on days when plenary sittings take place. Additionally there are 14 typists working on a freelance basis on days of plenary sittings.

In recent years problems arose as regards the recruitment of new members of staff. The main reason is that almost no one has a good knowledge of shorthand nowadays, therefore we train new members ourselves in various fields in our department . We principally recruit graduates of institutes for translators and interpreters, because they are normally able to write shorthand. And the art of stenography is still essential for the making of the official parliamentary reports because all the interruptions and incidents taking place in the plenary chamber have to be recorded as well. Our work sometimes is generically related to the work of interpreters, because we kind of translate the different Austrian dialects into written standard German. Like many Austrians also the Members of Parliament, who are the representatives of the people, now and then find the German language rather heavy going.

In the mean time the staff of our department has undertaken tasks that in the past were accomplished by the printing works concerning for example the layout of the official report. For ten years now we have been publishing our products, the official reports, on the intranet and the internet.

I don’t want to anticipate the presentation that will be given in the parliament on Thursday. A comprehensive written summary in English and German will be handed out there. Those, who cannot listen to the presentation in the parliament due to the fact that the historic building is a large building site at the moment and just during the summer numerous renovation works are carried out, will find a corresponding link on the internet provided by the organizers of this congress.

 

Finally I would like to say that I am really looking forward to the presentations of our colleagues from the other countries. I wish you and all of us every success and, I hope so, the necessary appreciation of our work in the future.