Speech recognition (Dragon or ?) for editing-heavy workflow Thread poster: Pablo Strauss
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Hi all,
I believe I've read through most of the previous posts on this topic in these forums, thanks everyone!
Briefly, I've been thinking about trying voice recognition and recently broke my wrist (good hand), so it suddenly became more pressing. I'm hesitant to invest the money and especially time to learn Dragon Professional (I would need the voice command option not available in Home) unless I could be confident it could work well not only for a first draft but also for the edit... See more Hi all,
I believe I've read through most of the previous posts on this topic in these forums, thanks everyone!
Briefly, I've been thinking about trying voice recognition and recently broke my wrist (good hand), so it suddenly became more pressing. I'm hesitant to invest the money and especially time to learn Dragon Professional (I would need the voice command option not available in Home) unless I could be confident it could work well not only for a first draft but also for the editing portion of my workflow.
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My work:
- I do literary and commercial translation (ideally a 50-50 split, lately 70-30 commercial).
In both cases my habit is a fast first draft followed by many (5-10) rewritings. This is the way I have always worked and would be difficult to change.
- I work in Trados Studio 2022, which is mandatory with my current agency clients.
Otherwise, I work directly in Word or ia Writer.
- I use a lot of autohotkey scripts, and imagine I would need to recreate them for voice? I'm on Windows 10. Could move to Windows 11
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My questions:
1. Has anyone successfully used speech recognition for the editing portion of their workflow? Even if it's not as fast as typing, can it come close?
2. Has anyone had success using Dragon with Studio to the point where it is faster or as fast as typing?
3. Has anyone successfully used an alternative to Dragon with Studio?
4. If you simultaneously use voice and typing, does that work well? I am especially wary of doing this with Studio, which I already find twitchy and buggy.
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THANKS FOR ANY ADVICE!
Pablo ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas 
United Kingdom
Local time: 08:42
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
I can only provide limited input, but for what it's worth...
Pablo Strauss wrote:
- I use a lot of autohotkey scripts, and imagine I would need to recreate them for voice?
I am also a heavy user of ahk scripts. I just trigger them using Dragon and I do not see why you should not be able to do the same. I prefer autohotkey to using Dragon's built-in scripting, as the environment is a bit pokey and the font in the editor is tiny.
1. Has anyone successfully used speech recognition for the editing portion of their workflow? Even if it's not as fast as typing, can it come close?
I think I'm reasonably close, although I do type more in this part of my workflow than when generating text from scratch.
2. Has anyone had success using Dragon with Studio to the point where it is faster or as fast as typing?
I would say that I am as fast with Dragon as I was with typing. I was not a particularly slow typist (think about 60wpm at my peak) but then again I am not sure that speed is that useful as I find that most of my time is spent thinking rather than typing. And of course, voice recognition is much less stressful on the body.
4. If you simultaneously use voice and typing, does that work well?
Not simultaneously, but sequentially. Remember that if you type and use the voice at the same time the keyboard and the voice input are effectively fighting for focus. Even when I'm using voice recognition my hands are nearly always on the keyboard. So I might use the keyboard to initiate a shortcut then follow it up with some spoken text.
Remember that you will be able to do very little "intelligent editing" using Dragon in Studio itself. You will either have to use the input box that comes with Dragon itself (not great, in my experience), try a third-party solution (e.g. see https://speechproductivity.eu/ ) or compose in Notepad and copy over, which is what I do.
ADDENDUM - when editing using Dragon, I often find that it pays not to. That is to say, instead of making changes to existing text, it is usually quicker to simply delete the whole lot and re-speak the sentence.
Regards,
Dan
[Edited at 2022-09-23 06:41 GMT]
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Agree with everything Dan says as usual, except I've never persisted with editing using Dragon as it's way quicker and easier with mouse and keyboard.
I've done my first drafts with Dragon/ViaVoice for 25(?) years. Not without some issues, but definitely a massive time and body saver.
Re wrist: I've broken both mine and various other bits of my arms and always managed to type on, but when I had RSI I found learning the mouse with the wrong hand surprisingly easy. Good l... See more Agree with everything Dan says as usual, except I've never persisted with editing using Dragon as it's way quicker and easier with mouse and keyboard.
I've done my first drafts with Dragon/ViaVoice for 25(?) years. Not without some issues, but definitely a massive time and body saver.
Re wrist: I've broken both mine and various other bits of my arms and always managed to type on, but when I had RSI I found learning the mouse with the wrong hand surprisingly easy. Good luck! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Pablo Strauss
Canada
Local time: 03:42
French to English
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks for your very helpful replies, Dan and Ice Scream!
I'm already getting used to using a (trackball) mouse with my other hand.
And you've both convinced me to play around with some free dictation before making the leap to Dragon. And we'll see how long the wrist takes to heal...
Always great to have input from actual translators, thanks again!
P
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Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 08:42
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
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