Despite your best efforts, sometimes you just can’t accurately transcribe words or phrases in a task. This can be due to audio quality or being unable to verify terms with a search engine. So, what should you do in these situations?
Well, there are two ways of going about it. You can use an (INAUDIBLE) or (UNKNOWN) label. But how do you know which one to use?
If a task’s media has poor or challenging audio, it can be hard to decipher what is being said. The content is not always clear or easy to hear. If you have made a reasonable effort to discern the audio by trying things like turning up the volume, listening multiple times, and using a search engine to find what you may be hearing, but the speech is definitely indiscernible, use (INAUDIBLE).
Often, media has been created in an education environment, so if a student is speaking off-microphone and you can’t hear what is being said, you can also transcribe this as (INAUDIBLE). This will ensure the viewer of the transcript doesn’t miss the context that the lecturer is talking to a student.
If you have a task with clear or high quality audio, and you still cannot verify or understand a term being said, you should use (UNKNOWN). However, this should only be used as a last resort after making a reasonable effort to verify the term using a search engine. It may also be helpful to look at the on-screen graphics or lecture slides.