Voice recognition v secretary / transcriber which is best? Whenever you mention voice recognition today in our world of high technology many people expect the “Star Trek experience”, you say it and your computer automatically does what you ask of it. James Kendrick is a Technology Columnist at ZDNet (CBS Interactive) and has been actively involved with speech recognition for over ten years. This includes intensive training by IBM with its Via Voice technology, resulting in designation as a Speech Recognition Specialist. “When speech recognition first hit the PC years ago it was with the promise of a voice controlled world. We would be able to run our computers and dictate to create content with hands firmly off the keyboard. Reality soon set in as it became clear that computers, and the apps that listened to us, weren’t very accurate. It didn’t help that the intensive speech recognition programs required heavy-duty PCs to even work. Computing hardware improved over the following years and the programs got more accurate at interpreting what humans spoke. Even so, it wasn’t accurate enough to get many to put their hands in their pockets and talk to the computer. We now have speech recognition on Smartphones, tablets, and PCs, but aside from dictating short phrases few owners are using it. Apple’s introduction of Siri and her voice-centric input rekindled interest briefly in speech input. Companies making the technology are quick to tell us their products are 90+ percent accurate at interpreting speech, but that’s still not good enough. That’s an admission that 5 to 10 of every 100 spoken words will not be correctly translated to digital text. It doesn’t help that editing incorrectly interpreted speech by voice is an exercise in frustration. Even speech input in a totally quiet environment using a high-quality noise-cancelling headset only gets you 90-95 percent recognition accuracy. I’ve been trying to use speech recognition for over a decade, and what I see today is only a little better than what I saw back then.” Secretary or Transcriber If Voice Recognition software isn’t working for you or if the article above has put you off trying it and you need your dictation or recordings transcribed / typed up there is an alternative out there. Life as an experienced audio typist, secretary or transcriber is not easy as they have to type / transcribe hours of audio recordings that may be poorly recorded, have interruptions e.g. background noise such as coffee machines, traffic, etc. There will be difficulties with authors not spelling names, not dictating correctly e.g. cutting off words, mumbling, not speaking directly into the microphone. There will be authors with heavy accents, poor command of the English language, coughing, laughing and speaking over one another. We expect 99 + percent accuracy of these unsung heroes and thanks to their experience, research, dedication, attention to detail and passion for their work this is consistently achieved at Transcribe UK.