Below is my unedited voice-to-text story for your perusal. Please see my thoughts on this text below this transcript.
“so this one time when I was in Paris I got off the airplane and I was at the airport and was trying to get to downtown Paris but wind up happening is my two bags of me have a social the bag that I had in front of me and then I also had a really suit case studies on the train platform is extremely careful because you know that sometimes are sketchy people waiting on the train platform and wanted up in any trouble Lord you know having to deal with anyone being rude or trying to grab my stuff sizing pretty carefully keeping a lookout but I was also waiting for a train and I was bored so I started playing on my phone I don’t have a flight angry birds are kiddie crush or whatever but I wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to the time I crinkled up and it’ll divide behind me in the opposite problem I thought it was supposed to be out but it was clearly the right train it was an express train to Paris so I quickly shove my phone into this little side purse that I had kind of in front of me is little cross body bag and I started working for the train before I can get very far this woman ask only you know block my way I should these two huge tote bags and she started doing you know we starting I will dance they do trying to get around each other we were very get it at you I was going one way she went the other you know but then we started kind of wishing you’re back and she ended up in front of me again and you know just thinking IN such a class students as a school dance banana just whatever a little bit too long and I started thinking like this is bizarre just seem to want to get past me what is going on but eventually to get around this woman and he started hitting my train you really little really die this bad sense about that there was something that was happening that wasn’t quite right so right before supply chain I looked down into my little black side purse that I had you known for me and I thought of my won’t was missing it was this little pouch that didn’t even hardly look like wallets but it had all of my credit cards at had all of my idea except for my passwords if I didn’t have it I mean I made up a card and had my scuba diving card and I absolutely everything in it that was super super important for me to be able to keep traveling I think now looking a little bit guilty but maybe I’m wrong so I look them in the eyes and I start trying to remember in my French which is usually pretty good but when I’m flustered a gets a little bit worse so I decided to dip into my absolute Lee most annoying teacher French and ended up telling her that frankly taking my wallet wasn’t very nice but she was very confused but nevertheless I persisted and continue tell her that she need to get back my wallet asking did look confused as she made a couple of sounds but I don’t actually she spoke French so I was thinking it was actually barking up the wrong tree and then maybe I lost my wallet somewhere else when she finally decided that it might be in her best interest to give me what I wanted so she had one hand that was propped up on her totebag and decided that I would rather make my dreams and tried to engage in any more conversation with this thief associate in him me back my wallet apologized for taking at her she sees that it was an accident actually I was little confusing to me as to how you pick pocket somebody’s wallet by accident but I really do think that she thought I was going to get on the train before I notice my wallet missing into would have to deal with me unfortunately for her that nap and I did reported to the security guard the next train station but unfortunately the very front porch the entire thing and said that it was Paris and well what do I want what I expected to do about the pockets I figured the conversation something that they weren’t really interested I think this is the least of their worries back pocket”
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The text above, which I recorded on Notes using the dictation option provided by my MacBook Pro, deviates startlingly from the conventions of written English in about every possible way at some point in the text. Punctuation is non-existent, words have been misunderstood and transcribed as other words, or as a series of other words that do not come together to produce meaning. The piece itself doesn’t function as a written text as it is nearly impossible to follow the meaning of it, even when reading it as the person who originally dictated it.
Generally the program was able to identify proper nouns and correctly capitalized them. Some portions of the text were remarkably well transcribed and would have provided the reader with a fairly accurate sense of the progression of the story had these not been followed up by so many illegible sections. Furthermore the software did seem startlingly good at transcribing idioms like “barking up the wring tree” and “the least of their worries”, which tells me that it was specifically trained in transcribing these. Overall the dictation software seemed to thrive on predictable grammar and sentence structure, which spoken language does not always provide in the same way as the written word. Had I written the story out first and made use of a process similar to the “‘secondary orality’ of present-day high-technology culture, in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television, and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print” (Ong, 2002), my final transcript may have born a closer semblance to the original story. As Gnanadesikan (2011) stated, “written pieces are more carefully crafted than a typical spoken sentence.”
The most grievous errors that interfere with meaning seem to stem from the dictation software misunderstanding what was spoken and erroneously transcribing the word. This led to the word “wallet”, which was central to the story, being transcribed as “won’t”. The purpose of writing is to clarify and refine meaning, which is why when non-standard language is transcribed in this dictation I consider it an error.The software also transcribed sounds without taking into account the entire context of the sentence. This leads to mistakes like “absolute Lee” instead of “absolutely”. In this case, the software heard what I had said very accurately but was not able to take into account context and ended up transcribing it into two different words by focusing on the sounds of the syllables and reorganizing them in a way that made perfect sense if the meaning of the text were no object.
This reminded me somewhat of King Ibrahim Njoya, ruler of the Bantum people of Cameroon, who in 1896 had his language converted into written form by codifying it into 73 syllabograms and 10 numerals (Gnanadesikan, 2011). If written English were traditionally transcribed syllabically, the dictation software would have encountered far fewer errors. Although, reading a text in this way with a dictation software that presumably would not be able to identify how syllabic symbols should be grouped into words, would provide the reader with a more challenging reading experience as they would have to group the syllables themselves into a meaningful text.
The story that I dictated is not one that I have ever written down, although I have retold it to friends countless times, because how often does a person actually get their wallet back from a pickpocket? I realized after reading the dictation that, even beyond the glaring written errors, the story loses much of its meaning and relevance by being transcribed in the way that I usually speak it aloud. My oral stories rely heavily on gesture and facial expressions to land the punch lines and draw the listener in; a written transcript just doesn’t provide the audience with the same intended experience as hearing it told aloud. Even if the piece were perfectly transcribed the experience of reading it would be similar reading a play instead of watching it be performed. The story, although it has been written down is a monologue, rather than a written short story.
Ong focuses on how “oral cultures” operate in a way that is different from literate cultures. I find that even literate cultures who rely heavily on their writing systems, like our own, have an exclusively oral tradition for some parts of our human experience. Everyone has stories that they tell and retell, changing the structure of the telling each time to improve the effect on the listener. For many of these stories there is no intention that they will ever be written down and the entire process of refining the piece lives exclusively in the practice of an oral tradition within a literate society. The refining process of turning an oral story into a written one is substantially different, with practiced gestures being replaced by adjectives and adverbs, vocal emphasis by punctuation. I would argue that a strong oral tradition continues to exist in literate societies, although we no longer depend on it for organizational systems like laws or trade. Its primary purpose in our society is to build social connections between people and aid in developing a shared understanding using the patchwork of small occurrences that make up our day-to-day lives.
References:
Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cunieform to the internet. (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).
Ong, Walter, J. Taylor & Francis eBooks – CRKN, & CRKN MiL Collection. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. New York; London: Routledge.