ITE 221 - Spring 2012 - Chapter 7

My blog for Chapter 7 is related to speech-recognition software.  The article, titled “Can Speech-Recognition Software Work in Mandarin?”, was published on BusinessWeek.com in March 2012.  At the time the article was published, Apple was getting ready to release a product called Siri in Chinese and in anticipation of that event, the author decided to try Nuance Communications’ Dragon software in Mandarin Chinese. Dragon is another speech-recognition product and Nuance Communications also produced the speech-recognition technology that Apple's Siri is built on. Although the author appeared to be impressed by Dragon's functionality/ability, he noted that Mandarin is a particularly challenging language for speech-recognition software, as there are only “400 monosyllabic sounds in Mandarin, which are differentiated by tone." Additionally, Nuance's vice president for Dragon research, Jim Wu, noted that "within mainland China, everyone has a different accent;" so basically, Nuance was tasked with creating a software that would work for “people who speak Mandarin with a slight accent." As mentioned in the textbook, as speech-recognition software Dragon is not 100% accurate, but it is built to "learn and improve." Dragon does this by selecting user speech data and updating your profile at the end of each usage, so the more it is used, the more accurate it becomes.

I actually used Dragon to produce this summary :-)  I am a HUGE advocate for Nuance Communications!

The link to my article: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-19/can-speech-recognition-software-work-in-mandarin