Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Reliability of Voice Recognition Technology

Voice recognition technology refers to that technology that recognizes spoken word and converts it into text.  There are many voice recognition softwares in the market, the most popular one being Dragon Naturally Speaking Software by Nuance.  Here, we will talk about this particular voice recognition software.
 
Dragon Naturally Speaking

Voice recognition software is very helpful to an individual whose keyboard skills are poor.  The software ‘Dragon’ is designed in such a way that the user has a proper interface with the software and its features to the fullest extent possible.

To start with, the software needs to be trained.  Every new user creates his individual profile and then starts the procedure to train the software.  Dragon comes with a module in which the user needs to train it with regards to the tone of the user’s voice.  This module has a series of steps to be followed so that the software gets accustomed to his voice.  Once the user is comfortable with the commands of the software, he can work with the software on live jobs.

As a transcriber, a live job means the audios to be transcribed.  With this software, a transcriber can listen to the audio and speak out the lines as they are heard.  This software also contains intelligence which is of added advantage to the user.  If a user narrates a line, the software is able to interpret the content to some extent and not confuse with phrases like ‘I scream’ and ‘ice cream’ according to the context.

This software is also helpful for those who lack a proper English vocabulary.  Difficult and rarely used words like ‘habiliments,’ ‘sacerdotal,’ etcetera, if spoken properly and clearly, can be typed out by Dragon without the transcriber knowing these words.  It is also useful in a similar way in case of names of places.  The more this software is used, the more it gets accustomed to the voice and tone of the speaker thus enabling it to grasp the context and content matter of the file.  This helps to easily get hold of some words which are time-consuming to find in some cases.

Using 'Dragon' for the actual work
At times, a file can have some medical terms specific to some disease.  In these cases also Dragon helps to some extent and deciphers the words with regards to the contextual meaning of the statement.  A disease name such as amebiasis can be spelt as pronounced by Dragon more or less in a correct way provided the user narrates it correctly.

In general, even simple English words which frequently appear in a file; for example, words like ‘differentiation,’ which are long and tedious to type, are easily taken care of by Dragon once it gets used to the speaker’s accent, tone, pronunciations, etcetera.  All in all, Dragon reduces the time spent on typing the file and enables a transcriber to devote more time to research.  This results in optimum quality transcripts.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

A lot of people who wants to be in the MT industry are sort of curious and some are even concerned that there may come a time when a machine or a computer may and will be able to replace them. I'd say that this possibility can happen to any kind of job/industry but it does not mean people will be replaced but rather will be helped in making their jobs better.