1. A method for translating stenographic strokes, the method comprising: receiving a series of stenographic strokes on a stenographic keyboard; creating a table of translations of one or more strokes within the series of strokes using a steno-to-text dictionary; sequentially assigning a score to each of the one or more strokes; determining at least one alternate translation to at least one of the translations in the table of translations, the at least one alternate translation determined using at least one of a phonetic matching algorithm and an approximate matching algorithm, the at least one alternate translation beginning with a first stroke in the series of stenographic strokes; ranking the translations and alternate translations based on an accumulation of the score of the strokes within; and selecting at least one of: one of the ranked translations; and one of the ranked alternate translations, based on a best score.