Dysfunctional In Any Language

Say That Again

from the oops dept

Since the corporate side of the business has some clients in the voice recognition space, I end up reading enough stories about voice recognition technologies that don’t work. Those reviews usually read the same way – and seem to miss out on the point that voice recognition technology has places where it is quite useful, and does work very well. The typical review, which always mentions a couple phrases the software got wrong gets tiresome fast. However, the following review was just funny enough to get included in this Friday of random stories. It’s a review of a pocket translator device, which has actually been on the market for some time. However, they apparently haven’t worked out all the kinks. To quote directly from the article: “But what it lacks in utility, it makes up for in entertainment value. The Ectaco Personal Translator proved the perfect icebreaker during a dinner party in rural France. It turned “thank you for the great dinner” into “it was disgusting,” and “you are very beautiful” into “how much?” What better way to break the ice with a roomful of total strangers in a foreign country whose language you don’t know?”