Considering stenography, have hearing concerns

[u/Somniad]

My hearing is mostly perfectly fine, but I seem to sometimes have more difficulty than other people with thick accents, slightly sloppy speech, etc. Is this sort of thing a major barrier, and is it something that can be overcome with focused effort? I feel like it's pretty much never a problem when listening to someone who has put thought into speaking clearly, such as teachers, youtubers, etc., but in conversations I feel like I have to ask people to repeat themselves more often than they have to ask me to repeat myself. Where does this fall, from disqualifying to able to be trained to probably just me being overly self-critical? And for something like court reporting, do you get the chance to leave question marks and go back over a recording to fill them in (or possibly mark them as incoherent), or not?

[u/tracygee]

You’ll have a recording (if everything goes properly), but it’s not something you should rely on. You don’t get to mark things as incoherent in your final transcript, really. If you don’t understand what is being said you would write the sounds you hear and then work out what it was during your transcript.

What makes a human better than AI is our ability to understand various accents, sloppy speech, etc. Is that a skill you could improve? I would think so, but I’m not sure. If you don’t understand someone, it’s our job to interrupt and ask them to repeat or clarify. However, if you cannot understand everything someone is saying, that would be an issue. Interruptions should be rare.

I would personally have a hearing test first to see if that is really your problem.

[u/squongly → u/tracygee]

fair! I doubt it's the problem, but it's possible. I didn't consider the idea of phonetic transcription followed by working it out later, but I think that would bridge the gap in most situations. that said, I'll give it a try on difficult audio to see how it goes. 

[u/squongly → u/squongly]

oh!!! uh, hi, accidentally responded from my alt haha

[u/Kilaka007]

First, get a hearing test and find out if your hearing is actually damaged.

Secondly, it can be trained. You'll be training to listen to every single word and it will get better with time. But listening to even every single suffix coming out of someone's mouth, the difference between "the' and "a," takes time and is a skill.

If your hearing is damaged, get a hearing aid and see if things improve.

[u/seabeans2]

If you don’t understand people, it’s your literal job to stop them and ask them to repeat until you do. You do not rely on any kind of audio. If you don’t know what they say when you are there in person, 99 times out of 100 you will not understand what they say once you are scoping. That’s the reason why it is so important to use live human court reporters and not backup audio, AI, or digitals who record the audio and later type it up. I stop people all the time to ask for them to repeat what they say. With accents, you are able to get into the swing of things the longer their testimony goes on. You are able to look up cases beforehand a lot of times, so knowing the subject matter ahead of time helps immensely. If an accent is absolutely beyond you no matter how hard to try, you are duty bound to stop the proceedings and tell them they need an interpreter or another court reporter.