What a hoot!  And no, this isn’t about Egypt and the discovery of the latest King Tut tomb.

The Wall Street Journal just ran an article about a Colorado woman named Letha Sanders who has started a business called Shorthand Translation Services.   She accepts documents written in Gregg shorthand from people who can’t figure out what the “heiroglyphics” say and translates them (transcribes, them, actually), much as a foreign language translator would do.  Here is the link to the article, where you can see examples of the shorthand  she translates. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703303904575292982869708158.html?mod=djemLifeStyle_h

Do you wonder that people stop and gawk?  When you stop to think about it, Gregg shorthand IS a foreign language to the average person.

I was so excited about this that I wrote to Ms. Sanders.  I wanted to tell her how much I admired her.  I studied shorthand in high school and used it during the summers to help pay my way through college.  I still use it, in fact, when I take personal notes.  (Trust me, you wouldn’t be able to read them. You’d have to call Ms. Sanders to decode them for you.)  I love the system.  It’s an elegant, brilliant way to capture the spoken word in just a matter of a few graceful penstrokes. To think that somebody is making money deciphering this stuff is so cool to me it’s totally off the wall.  More power to ya, Letha!

This makes me want to go find my Gregg shorthand book and review my brief forms!  (That’s not underwear.  It’s abbreviated phrases.)  

I guess it just goes to prove that a translator is a translator in any language–even when the subject is the English language coded in inscrutible squiggles.  You think that fifty years from now someone will be deciphering abbreviations for texting?   CUL8R!