Myth Crusher Monday - Dragon Naturally Speaking Can Produce Professional Transcripts
This Monday's Myth Crusher is once again inspired by The Warrior Forum. In a recent thread, a member was disappointed with the quality of transcripts provided with an audio product. He said, "Every other word is 'you know; or 'like' and, well, you know what I mean. You know?"
Now, I have no idea what the product is and how the transcripts were created...but it did get me to thinking of previous threads where people have claimed, "You don't need a transcriptionist. Just use Dragon Naturally Speaking."
I must say Dragon Naturally Speaking has come a long way since I tried to use it in 2004. It's speech recognition has dramatically improved, it no longer requires voice training to get started and it can recognize more than one voice. But even though it may be very accurate in writing what you say - the reality is the way we speak (unless we're professional speakers) may be digestible in audio format, but put that on paper and our stutters, ummm, uhs and so forth are painful to the reader.
A Garrie Wilson mentioned in the thread I linked to above:
"People should use [software like Dragon Naturally Speaking] for their intended purpose. To save *some* time then edit."
I completely agree. Whether you use a professional transcriptionist to do things right from the beginning or get a proofreader/editor to go in after the fact...the point is, a human touch is needed. A professional transcriptionist can clean up all the extra words, fix grammar, catch errors and inconsistencies. I'm sorry, but no piece of software can do that.
6 Comments:
I tried every which way I could to make this software work for my previous company.
We handled large transcription accounts for several hospitals and this would have been a life saver for us. Unfortunately, it's just not as easy as the makers of this software make it sound.
To actually get this to work for you, you'll need to "train" the software extensively and even then if you ever record an interview with a new "voice" the software won't be able to accurately transcribe it.
Even once you train it to recognize your voice you will still need to go through the transcript and edit it... sounds like double work to me.
In my opinion, it's just not worth it. Get a good human transcriptionist to transcribe and edit your work. A good transcriptionist can also edit your writing so that it flows and reads well (very important).
Also, I remember 10 years back where so many transcriptionists were worried this software would mean an end to their careers - fast forward 10 years and there is still no software that can accurately duplicate what a human transcriptionist can do.
I agree that software can't replace humans...of course, I wrote this blog entry. But as I understand it and have been told by current users of the software, you no longer have to train the software like you once did.
I would be interested to hear from someone who owns a current version what's involved.
Admittedly the last time I used this was I think in 2003 so I'm sure a lot has changed in that time.
Personally, I would still rather use a transcriptionist.
I actually bought the product that was mentioned in that thread. It looks like it wasn't done with software, but the people who put the transcripts together didn't seem very professional. It was really hard to read.
I know someone who purchased it last year and there was still a lot of training involved in that version.
When it didn't work so well doing it the typical way, she decided to try training it to her voice and then she'd more or less just repeat into a microphone what she was hearing through the headphones, hoping this would produce a cleaner transcript.
That didn't work out so well either and it ended up taking as much time as it would have to just transcribe it straight out.
I used to do transcription way back when I was in high school. I think at the time, I would have appreciated a software like this, even if it wasn't 100% accurate. It would probably have done better than I did! LOL
However, I think as technology progresses, it may get to a point that a software like this will be worth it, I just don't think its there yet.
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