lee <lee <at> yagibdah.de> writes:
> is there a speech recognition software or the like which is capable to > listen in on a phone call in order to put on screen as text what the > other person is saying? I like to say that there are (2) main categories of effort here, one very do-able (a single voice), the other (infinite voices) plausibly intractable atm. > I'd like to connect that to a softphone so that someone who suffers from > very bad hearing can talk to people on the phone more easily. This is possible, if only a few voices; that have had their speech patterns analyzed, manipulated into storage with ample resources, then what you seek is possible, accuracy is the constraint. > If there's a phone capable of this, I'd like to know about it. If you are after a solution that can work with any voice, even limited to a single language, then the answer is a long way away. Some would say intractable. There is the question of accuracy required and the complexity of vocabulary, sentence structure and allowed nominal variation on the voice(s). > Surely we should be able with nowadays technology to achieve this. With google sized resources, you can masquerade the problem with templates for many different voices, but the underlying problems abound without limit. What you actually do is 'train' the google system to customize it's translation of a given voice, very accurately over time. Now say I disguise my voice with a throat infection, depressed attitude, exuberance etc etc, you can see the troubles. In fact, the day after watching horrible English cinema, which is often contagious (monty python --life_of_bryan), I often develop a temporary 'Manchester slang' in the vernacular. Endless, unlimited gyrations should one want to have a bit-o-fun with language, particularly when any number of 'hill_billy' contaminants manifest. My mathematical belief is the problem is intractable, certainly as you approach a high level of required accuracy. In fact folks routinely joust with one anther around the 'looseness of language' and the various varieties of layered meanings.... Truly intractable, but a 'dumbed down' simile surely will exist at some point. Google ibm in your searches as they did quite a bit of foundational research in a variety of related areas of (speech/sound/voice) research. Still, google's offering might prove acceptable for your needs. hth, James
