Proudly sponsored by Smartcat. Smartcat makes it easy for companies and translators to connect with clients and find more work.

Well, the short answer is “Probably, no”, but in case you missed it, we had a very interesting conversation with Dragos Ciobanu about automatic speech recognition and how professional freelance translators can use it in their work.

We talked about some advantages and drawbacks as well as discussed who might benefit the most from this type of software.

Watch on YouTube

Listen on SoundCloud

Or if you’re super busy, you can check out some of the highlights below.

Highlights of the Show

1) What can you use speech recognition for? (view answer)
2) How long does it take to train the software to learn to recognize your voice and diction? (view answer)
3) Does speech recognition seem to be more suitable for some tasks as opposed to others? (view answer)

You can watch the replay of the entire episode right here.

About Dragos

After working in-house as a technical writer and linguist using English, French and Romanian to write and translate content in the telecommunications industry, Dragoș completed his PhD in Computer-Assisted Language Learning in the University of Leeds Centre for Translation Studies and became a Lecturer in Translation Studies specialising in Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tools, collaborative translation practices, and using Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) in professional linguists’ workflows.

Since 2013 he has been training heads of translation units and senior translators from EU and UN Institutions to use CAT and ASR tools more effectively. He is also an instructional designer using his background in languages and technology to produce effective multilingual, multimedia online resources.

In this episode you will learn:

• What speech recognition is good for;
• What options translators have if they want to use ASR tools;
• What reasons prevent translators from trying out this technology;

…and much more!

Watch this episode online

P.S.: As always, sharing is caring, so if you really enjoyed watching this episode, make sure you click one of those social-sharing buttons below.

Hugs from Toronto and Nizhny Novgorod!