Voice recognition software works fine if the language is not complex. At my house, Siri on our Apple iPhone and the voice recognition on our Android smartphone are usually dead-on for short phrases.
But challenge them with some unconventional English and the results can be quite interesting.
Check this out. Just this week, after a hard drive crash, I fed a radio feature I did on a walk through London through the software grinder to regenerate a script. What is the worst that could happen. The result was what I’d describe as a combo of a snockered James Joyce with something strange, something that would make even Allen Ginsberg howl in terror. Call it a digital poetry slam.
The original script began like this:
As a Monty Python fan, London in my mind’s eye is a city of silly walks: eccentric lopes, tortured tangos and goofy goose steps.
Here is the original script — recovered by manual transcription — and the original audio feature.
Now here is my recording of the machine translation.
I guess I should really keep my day job.
I’m Russ Johnson and this is aNewDomain.net. Congrats on the relaunch.
