This is the raw text from the “voice to text” experiment we undertook this week. It is a tale of a boy named Jeremy.

This is the story I’m going to tell you about how our Frisbee team got its actual name our Frisbee team the ultimate Frisbee team I played with for many years is called to Hans Jeremy and it all goes back to a time about 40 years ago on December 24 we were all at our own houses eating turkey and stuffing and drinking lots of cans of Ginger ale and then over indulging in all kinds of other things like treats and snacks and candy you name it on December 24 it was a ritual in our neighborhood to all head out at midnight to go to the midnight mass and one of our friends in particular Jeremy would always get there about 45 minutes early because his parents wanted to be in the front row so anyways Jeremy was upfront and we were all in the back room anyways Jeremy looked a little bit worse for wear and we could tell that he had really overindulged he kept turning to his father and asking him if you could leave and go to the washroom and I think his dad was saying no because they’re in the front row and it was just too much of a bother well as the 

church filled out more and got warmer Jeremy just got greener and greener and it was about five minutes until the priest is about to head down the aisle when Jeremy finally started to lose it and this is the point where the name of our frisbee team comes from so Jeremy put one hand up to his mouth and he said dad I can’t make it and dad said OK if you go and Jeremy started to move his way out of the aisle just as the priest was heading down from the back of the church and he got to the aisle he looked at his dad and he said I can’t make it and dad looked at him and he saidHis dad said to Hans Jeremy to Hans and it was at that point the Jeremy reached out with a secondhand but it was just too late his second hand formed more of a launching pad and a block for what was to come out and it was the Technicolour a yard of the century for all to see at midnight mass and that’s how we got our name for our Frisbee team or Frisbee team name is to Hans Jeremy Endu has Jeremy’s been around for about 20 years we have T-shirts we have one championship to our name in the great social thing that we are playing after 12 years but mostly we have a lot of fun because that’s what frisbee is really all about frisbees about having fun and hanging out being social I’ve carried on the tradition at my school and I do tell the I do tell the story just before we head into the finals of our championship games for the grade 78 ultimate frisbee team it’s always that last minute sort of hurrah that gets my students laughing and feeling confident and going into the game with a smile on their face and really spirit is a big part of ultimate frisbee all right that’s the story I wanted to tell just wanted to make sure that the name to Hans Jeremy lives on in infamy because it definitely deserves it thanks a lot

Here is a link to me telling the tale and watching it stream onto my screen.

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

My text ended up being one long run on sentence. The only punctuation was capitalization of a few proper nouns. The lack of punctuation changed the meaning of the text drastically at times. This led to subject confusion and to places where the software made adjustments that it felt made sense when in fact it did not. The toughest parts to understand were the dialogue or spoken parts that should have included quotations and other writing conventions to allow the reader to recreate the sound of what was said. Without these conventions of dialogue, even I started to get confused. The most amazing part for me was the late changes that occurred 30 seconds after the “voice-to text” had written a word. I watched back the video tape of the process and the word “gonna” and “God” were deviations that disappeared well after they were typed on the screen (check the changes at 1:05 on the video). While the computer was compiling my voice, it was also referring back and making changes based on what was written later.

What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

I think the most amazing part of this experience was related to what the “Voice-to-text tool” got correct. When it comes to recognizing and then spelling words correctly, this system was near infallible.  The text had no real spelling errors at all. I noticed it recreating words based on the context even after it had written a word and that amazed me. This type of self correction is new to me. The only errors were based on moments when the software misheard or more likely, I mispronounced a word. For example, the very first correction was the name of our Ultimate Frisbee Team, “Two Hands Jeremy” . The computer heard “to Hans Jeremy”. I said “Hands” over and over again and realized that I do not pronounce the d in “Hands” at all.  I also have a friend named Hans, and I wonder if the software takes into account the fact that this is a name found in the texting and messaging I do on this tablet device. While it seemed unlikely at first, what confirmed this for me was when the phrase “….or Frisbee team name is to Hans Jeremy Endu has Jeremy’s been around for about 20 years …” appeared. This should have read, “Our Frisbee team name is Two Hands Jeremy and Two hands Jeremy has been around for about 20 years…”  There is little chance that Endu, a fellow teacher at my school would end up in “voice-to-text” for someone who did not have an Endu in their contacts.

What are the most common “mistakes” in the text, and why do you consider them “mistakes”?

The most common error for me was the computer outputting names for words I did not pronounce well. As mentioned earlier, Hans and Endu are both names in my contacts that appeared in the text without having played any part in the story at all. I also had the following phrase pop up: “drinking lots of cans of Ginger ale.” I can’t figure out whether the software wanted to write Ginger Ale and just forgot to capitalize the second word, or more likely, it was counting on Ginger being a name by itself. The one name that does appear in the story was Jeremy and it was spelled and capitalized impeccably every time.

What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?

If I had tried to read the story aloud from a script it would have lost a sense of naturalness that comes from oral unscripted storytelling. Scripts are rehearsed and this precision can leave both the presenter and the audience disconnected at times. It is possible to watch a well rehearsed narrative and enjoy it, but the ability to read an audience and sense when a certain aspect of the performance has connected with them is the strength of the oral performance. If a man conducting an orchestra stands still in front of his team and barely moves his baton, he appears to be following a script and both the audience and the orchestra can be left underwhelmed. On the other hand, when the conductor is flailing around the stage and her baton is jabbing and stabbing the air as she hops madly about, anything seems possible. Will she throw her baton? Will she fall off the stage? Live unscripted performance is like real life. There are no good guys and bad guys just moments when we have no idea what is coming next and that, in itself, is a thrill that only comes from live unscripted performance. It is what makes watching last year’s basketball playoffs unfulfilling. Without an audience, my own oral retelling of the story of Jeremy lacked energy. There was no need for hand gestures and bulging eyes and this changed the overall presentation for the worse, in my opinion.

In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling?

I love telling this story aloud as I alluded to in the “voice-to-text” narrative. This allowed me to speak naturally adding inflection and emphasis where it was needed to increase suspense as the gurgling tummy started to rumble and boil. The written text does not do this story justice.  Not only is my typical teenage audience missing, the ability to create suspense about an impending explosion is downright difficult with out the hand gestures and bulging eyes. This story deserves to be told visually.  There are ways to present a picture with the written word, but the words needed to do this can never match the physical presence of a storyteller or actors.  Great writers can attain this lofty goal, but it is a gift we don’t all share. Our modern day comedians are the best example of oral storytellers that I can come up with who can use an assortment of tools they pull out in order to capture a mood with a turn of the head and raised eyebrow. While the written story is polished and filled with imagery, it pales in comparison to the raw energy of oral story telling.

Ed Note:

Gnanadeskin’s application of the broken telephone to oral tradition is always a hard one for me to swallow. I think that the changes made in the oral tradition have less to do with how we hear and much more to do with how we inspire. It is one thing to say a word wrong because you don’t hear it correctly, but the real changes often involve the desire to build up a story to make someone look better. For example “that fish I caught last summer was 12….no 16 inches long…..no 20 inches and it had giant teeth!” These aren’t the type of errors you make because you genuinely forgot the truth. I know Jeremy threw up a little but the technicolour yawn is a very large overstatement that only gets more embellished as the years pass.

Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internetLinks to an external site. (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).