The following is my (really messy) voice to text story. The tool used is the dictation tool on Word. Following are my answers to the questions posed regarding this task.
Following the text are annotations to errors I identified in reviewing the text. Eventually there were so many by page 3 I had stopped – but the early comments highlighted some of the typical transcription errors.
Voice to text transcript
Going to talk about my most recent trip which was a trip to Antarctica in January of 2020 and it’s interesting um first of all it was more than just a trip to Antarctica it was a month long trip that was the first week in the Atacama desert northern Chile and then a three week cruise which was approximately a week doing coming down the West coast of South America ending Ave schwaan Argentina about 10 day scheduled to be involved with Antarctica traveling to and from being on the continent and then just short of a week traveling North stopping the Falkland Islands which was really cool going to Uruguay and ending up in what is yours to fly home so the Genesis of the trip was actually about a year ago and I was on a different cruise to japan and Alaska and Russia with my sister and her husband and they are pretty much my travel buddies and they’re just a little tiny bit older than me and were all retired and have the wherewithal to travel and Fortunately I would get along really really really well with them and I think they go really well with me and we have a great time but on the Japan trip which was on seabourn there was a presentation one night by the ships executives on a new ship that seabourn was introducing and it was a new ship that they had purpose built really for and hard to come for the Arctic and it’s a really cool looking ship it’s a little bit smaller it has some special purpose rooms for changing your boots and getting dressed to go ashore and they had things like a submarine which I thought were really cool but I probably have claustrophobia and I’m never going to use a separate so my sister and I in her husband went to his presentation just to sort of see what it was about and it’s interesting but a couple things were evident to my sister really highlighted to me look maybe you should consider going to end article sooner versus later on seabourn before they ship they switch from the current ship which was identical to the ship here at the time to the new ship and my sister said look we went to Antarctica maybe 4 years ago with seaborn and we went on the similar ship to what we were on and she said we had a fantastic time we didn’t need a smaller ship none of us thought we needed a submarine and so that sort of the amenities that they had on the ship were really fantastic and they were suitable and I’d been interesting Lee a year before the Arctic ownership that wasn’t purpose built and they were also really able to almost seamlessly make it work for these Expeditions where you’re jumping on and off zodiacs and you’ve got boots on and you have to get changed and you got a lot of extra gear and it worked even without special purpose ship so i had that experience myself and my sister had that experience but the other thing she pointed out to me was two things about the new ship that was going to come in in 2021 it was going to do 10 day tours 10 or 12 day tours where you start new show you go through the Drake passage you spend five or six days in Arctic and come back it’s a really quick turn around in lieu of what was principally what they were doing with these 21 day tours where the ship would start in Santiago you spend a week sort of coming down the West coast of Chile you do the Antarctic portion and then you go up the East side of South America with a stop in the Falklands if possible it’s always subject to weather excuse me and ultimately ending up in what is errors to come home and she said look the price is about the same for 21 days versus these ten day turnarounds and she said we really enjoyed 21 days we like that length of time in the ship and we also really like the opportunity to see parts of Chile and to go to the Falkland Islands on the way north and it was a really great choice and she said you’re going to miss that on the 10 day turn around and the other thing I’d say in hindsight that also comes into play is on our on our trip we had scheduled 2 days of sailing from ushua South to the Antarctic continent six days there and essentially two days to get sort of North through the Falklands and on your way back to 210 Europe way and then pointed and when we got to issue a we spent the day there and then the ships captain came on that night and said we’re supposed to be leaving tonight to start South and we’re not going there are 25 to 35 foot seas that’s really too much for the ship we’re going to wait probably 12 to 18 hours and then go when they anticipate the seas will be under 20 feet 20 feet still sounds horrific to me and so we ultimately only had five days in a dark coat which was still terrific but if you’re on that shorter 10 day turn around you start to lose time there may be less and less time to maneuver you may end up with not six days or five days but four days and you could really start to anpin japon how much time you get in the continent purely subject to the weather which they it’s a it’s a safety issue they just can’t control it so the choices were the long cruise the shorter cruise I like the long cruise for whole lot of reasons and the price was the same I also liked it ’cause it gave me more days in Antarctica if something goes wrong and then actually when we came North the weather was getting bad again and they went really quickly and they ended up with sort of rocking and rolling North spent a lot of money on fuel but to get us out of the Drake passage before another huge storm came in and we ended up with two days in the Falkland Islands which was really really fantastic they took us to the West coast of Auckland which is a very une sort of uncommon place to go I mean certainly cruises go there but it’s not sort of the regular destination and then we went over to Stanley the second day and saw a different part of the oven which was really cool so the big choices were the long cruise versus the short cruise I’d like the long cruise the price at that point the long cruise was the same price as a short cruise and that was really terrific the second big difference about these Antarctic cruises it’s sort of two big differences in the subset and the differences are the ships that take you ashore and the ships that don’t take you assurance almost to sort of do a drive by and I think looking at the research it’s very much a function of cost and I think that if you cannot afford to go on a ship that stops you absolutely should go on a ship that just goes and drives by because the scenery was just spectacular into see Antarctica that way would still be just an amazing experience and so if you can’t go because of the cost of stopping the ones that go short do go on the other ships that just go and view the scenery in the continent that they’re just spectacular fjords to go through the different sort of narrow passages to go through with all mountainous and it’s just amazing and you would still see a lot of wildlife from the ship including Penguins Penguins and Penguins and the second thing is there are subset of the ships that go sure that stop twice a day versus once a day and I was on a ship that one once a day by Zodiac and that was OK i really like that but the second thing that sort of I ended up going off the ship more than once a day a couple times was I do kayaking and I’ve done lots of kayaking in Ontario in my youth I fill it with getting kayaks I don’t love them there super tippy I’ve certainly done tons of canoeing event new trips and was a camp counselor and did a lot of trips and so spent a lot of time and that kind of boat in the water but I was really leery in the late 50s to think Oh yeah I’m going to get my kayak ’cause I’m thinking Lake kayak tippy narrow no the kayaks they have for these cruise ships are big doubles no skirt they’re not taking you out if it’s rough enough that you’re really going to get any serious water in the kayak almost une dumpable really any anybody with any skill set can go and they take people whether they’ve ever been in a kayak or not and it was an amazing experience and I also got off the ship twice a day but the one thing I would say was i really have not thought I was going to kayak and so the first day we got there I sort of got the heads up so i should finally do it and we signed up and I was really lucky i got on Monday and I got waitlisted for another day insert through some miracle i got a second day on there but there were a lot of people who hadn’t appreciate that they wanted to go once you’re on the ship there was really no opportunity all the spots were full up and the other people that were really clever booked a lot of days because of this five days we were there I think there were sort of four or five slots today but there were twenty slots in five days probably only got to take the people out 12 or 13 times the rest of the times they would come up it would get too rough so if you do want to go book it alot you can always cancel someone will always take your spot so you’re not going to get dinged for the extra charge and it was a really terrific opportunity so if you look at a ship that takes you a short twice a day you may be doing that anyhow if you’re kayaking and even at once a day I was really thrilled you go it’s sort of a 3 hour episode by the time you’re dressed and go and you walk along and it was really great so coming North we did go to the Falklands which was well worth it and it’s really inspired me to want to go to South Georgia island which is further East and we ended up important here’s an interesting Lee at the end of the trip the trip went from the first week of January to the first week of February on these ships it’s very internationally oriented in terms of the media they have for you and you watch a lot of BBC international and certainly my sister and i and the other people that were very aware of covert 19 and we reading a lot of press enough that in the falkland islands population 3000 um my sister managed to buy some masks at the only hardware store in town and then we came North to Uruguay for a day and then flew home from Rio and I think at that time being aware of cover 19 we were aware that it was a 14 day incubation period at that point it was really coming out of Wuhan China Interestingly you look around the ship there were just two couples from China but we’d all been on this ship at this point for more than 14 days and we haven’t stopped anywhere other than the Falkland Islands for the last two weeks of the trip we gotta use way and then we had a couple days South Antarctica we had the time in Antarctica it’s now day 10 by the time we’re in the Falklands and stop to see anybody and it’s probably 14 days by the time we get to Rio and come home so we actually thought that there probably haven’t been any transmission on our ship and I would say the big cruise ship issues came a week later in Japan so it wasn’t a cruise ship issue yet but we were very aware of the issues about COVID-19 and at that point it was thought to be personal person transmission and certainly touched transmission notwithstanding what they’re saying now but that’s it seems to be revisionist history to me in the media because I know well well aware when I was flying home and well aware that we understood from the news reports we’d read that it was person to person through sort of aerosol and touch so the trip ends and you come North to Uruguay for Dame Anne Rio the other thing about this trip is are really two ways of the cruises do these 21 day trips they started Santiago do Chile first chili Antarctica and then North to Buenos Aires or in reverse and my sister had recommended to me at the time that I booked the trip and the staff on the boats were confirmed it to me when you chat to them that the better way to go is to do the chili 1st and chili was super exciting five or six stops coming down the coast and in pad ago NIA and reinforce and really just spectacular places to see and you start to get into the Penguins then then you get to into artica and its Penguin city and you see five or six different types Falkland Islands coming North again has Penguins in different dynamic but they said if you do it reverse and you come to the Falkland Islands and then you do enter ticker the guessing to be kind of tired with it gets chilly and the staff don’t think that they fully appreciate just how spectacular chili is so doing it before Antarctica is better I think you’re paying more attention I think you’re keener the answer to chili is a raincoat rain pants and waterproof hiking shoes the answer to antarcticus that they give you a coat if you’re from Canada you’ve already got really sort of the hot stuff you need waterproof gloves which I didn’t have and had to get and they have boots for you on board if you need them that are these huge neoprene bogs that you wear that are waterproof up to your knees ’cause you do get out of the zodiacs right into the surf but other than that it’s you know a couple of nice things to wear for dinner so nice sort of if you’re my age whatever your version of khakis and a nice blouse and a sweater and some loafers are and you look fine all the time so it’s a really fantastic trip to do it is I don’t want to say once in a lifetime ’cause I might go again when this ever ends but it’s really a terrific trip i really really enjoyed it I would recommend it to anybody else I do what your budget can afford and a little bit in a year ago my sister said you should go sooner versus later because we’re all but one thing away from this opportunity diminishing and we were sort of surprising then about environmental concerns and when are the environmental is going to wake up and say you can’t have all these people going to Antarctica every year um and then it turns out it’s not the environmentalists that have prevented the trips for the next year or two it’s going to be cold in 19 ’cause I think it’s going to be very tough for anybody to go on to these cruise ships which apparently are just Petri dishes for these diseases I mean it was well known before with Norwalk there was a problem but I don’t think I can get on a cruise ship again until the vaccine that I’ve had because people come from all over you have no idea where they’ve been and there’s really no way you could be that far away with the potential of being that sick mean getting Norwalk is one thing getting kovid with hopefully not bad consequences but potentially bad consequences you just can’t really do that on a ship anywhere let alone be you know as far away in the world as you could possibly be so that was the trip it was super cool I’m clearly looking forward to traveling again I’m clearly like those idiots thinking when can I go on a cruise again notwithstanding they had all those troubles I’m willing to go again I think that the baryard entry for me is a vaccine um an interesting my travel buddies say they are in the same boat too so that’s the trip if you got any questions let me know bye
[PM1]Grammar – I am going to talk about
[PM2]As oral aside. Written, this would have been edited
[PM3]Chile
[PM4]The first of many attempts to say and then spell Ushuaia
[PM5]Run on sentence – did I ever pause or come up for air
[PM6]New one “what is yours” instead of Buenos Aires
[PM7]genesis not Genesis (as in a book of the bible)
[PM8]Why not capitalized. Russia and Alaska are capitalized.
[PM9]We are all (we’re) not were
[PM10]Get not go
[PM11]Seabourn – name of shipping line
[PM12]Should read Antarctica and for
[PM13]“My sister said look we went..” Grammar.
[PM14]And none – probably I paused so could omit the “and” but the dictation does not pick that up
[PM15]I think I have no idea what I actually said here, but it was something akin to, but I went on trip to the Arctic the previous year on a ship that did not have special amenities for zodiac trips but they made it work…
[PM16]Did I say Artic or Antarctica?
[PM17]Excuse me was an interruption to cough = another endless run on thought
[PM18]Wow, the narrative moves between first person and third person – the story telling changes (wow)
[PM19]The city is called Ushaia
[PM20]210 Europe should read Uraguay
[PM21]Pointed zeros should read Buenos Aires
[PM22]Dark coat should read Antarctica
[PM23]Issue a way should read Usuahia
[PM24]One day not Monday
[PM25]Got Uraguay correct here but not before?
[PM26]Barrier to
Questions and Answers
Question1 – how does the text deviate from conventions of written English?
Wow. Where to start. Simply put the text deviates completely from the conventions of written English. There is no grammar. Period.
I am a litigation lawyer and often have my oral submissions transcribed by a Court reporter. I have read those transcripts which, pursuant to the input of the Court reporter, are transcribed with grammar, as they understood it should have been. I simply speak, but magically the transcript includes grammar – thoughts are transcribed into sentences. Punctuation is used. The transcript is understandable because of that input by an intervener – the Court reporter.
The text is this assignment is just one long run on sentence. It does not appear to conform, in almost anyway, to the conventions of written English. (Yikes it is awful).
Question 2 – What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?
What is wrong in the text is that it is such an ineffective written document to convey the story being told.
What is right with the text is, that it, in part, is a history of that oral discussion.
Question 3 – What are the most “common” mistakes in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?
The most common mistakes in the text are the lack of punctuation. I consider them to be mistakes because the lack of punctuation renders the text far less comprehensible than otherwise.
Question 4 – What if you “scripted” the story? What differences might that have made?
Scripting the story would have resulted in a more organized, likely linear, presentation of the story. The oral story might have even included headings, enunciated as markers by the speaker for the listener.
As set out above, I have had the opportunity to read many transcripts of my oral presentations. An example of lengthy oral submission I have made is a closing argument at trial. These can be one hour (or longer). The submissions are scripted, and while I don’t read the submissions (the Judge’s discourage that), I speak to the points that have been outlined in my written notes. The oral presentation does not digress to side discussions and is focussed and organized.
I also now surmise that the app used for the voice to text is critical. Punctuation appears to be an organizing idea that completely changes the text result.
Question 5 – In what way does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling?
Unscripted, oral story telling can be very different from written storytelling.
Scripted, oral story telling can be more similar to written storytelling – although the lack of tone, intonation and ie pauses in speech are lost in written text.
General comment
Reviewing my unscripted story and considering my oral presentations, it strikes me just how much of my oral speech is driven or dictated by the written word.