Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Recently I was given Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Essentials Speech Recognition Software for Christmas by my beloved Pamela. As you know, if you've seen the TV ads or visited the website, this product purports to change the spoken word into the printed word three times faster than most people can type, with up to 99% accuracy. My wonderful wife had picked up on my various verbal cues,otherwise known as begging, that if this system worked as well as advertised, it would be a great gift for a writer like me. Actually my darling wife was probably more impressed with the idea that multiple articles swiftly written meant more paychecks coming in more often. While I can type, if pounding articles out by the hunt and peck method can be called typing, I am not nearly as fast as someone who earns a living by writing should be. Dreaming of fat paychecks and her early retirement, my sweetie decided that I should give the system a try.

In order to be fair in testing the Nuance voice to typing system perhaps I should advise the reader that I do speak with a distinctly Southern accent. Not Dolly Parton, Andy Griffith or Jim Nabors Southern, but Southern nonetheless. Also when I first acquired this system I had somewhat of the beginnings of a cold, meaning: "Ah souded lak thias." Therefore the software shouldn't be blamed for early problems in transforming my speech into the written word. That doesn't mean I did not blame the software, only that I should not. If a company expects to do business selling speech recognition software below the Mason Dixon line then they should hire some Southern programmers to help develop their product. True Yankees do not understand the beauty and grace of Southern speech, nor does this computer program at first. In order to help the program develop an understanding of what I was saying it was necessary to read passages from the provided literature to give verbal clues as to how I pronounced certain words. Scott Adams is a talented cartoonist but several thirty minute sessions of reading aloud about Dilbert and Dogbert to a nonresponsive computer program swiftly loses its charm. I learned that no response is the computer equivalent of saying "Huh?" Even my beloved Pamela was having second thoughts about my ability to pad her bank account. Eventually the system began to behave better, allowing me to dictate articles into print somewhat quicker than I could manually type them myself. I did however, find myself using rather simplistic words and are phrases to avoid confusing the system and the Geneneration X crowd among us. Sometimes I had to go back and correct so many mistakes that I lost the time originally saved by dictating rather than manually typing the article myself.

At present the Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Essentials Speech Recognition Software is not producing anywhere near 99% accuracy in changing my sweetly spoken Southern words into print. That's ok, I don't type 99% accurately either, especially one fingered. "Offend" becomes "all said." "Don't buy cotton" is translated as "dot-dot-dot." Maybe the program is trying to communicate by Morse Code. I realize I'm still learning how to use the system and apparently the system is still learning how to use me, as is my wonderful wife. I suppose that my relationship with the software will improve as we get to know each other better. That line worked with my wife thirtysome years ago, so why not here?

Information for this article was obtained at http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/products/editions/standard.asp