…continued from Translation with ASR… The implications of using
speech recognition for translation in the interactive voice
response, or IVR, world could be far-reaching. IVR systems and
translation could go hand in hand. Barbara Dragsted, Inge Gorm
Hansen and Inger M. Mees from the Copenhagen Business School
were curious to see whether an automatic speech recognition
(ASR) program (vital to interactive voice response) could
improve translation among the translation and interpretation
students at their school. The researchers asked students to
translate various documents from Danish to English (the more
common of directions, as English is a much more widely used
language worldwide than Danish). They published their findings
in a paper: “Speaking Your Translation: Students’ First
Encounter with Speech Recognition Technology.” Dragsted, Hansen
and Mees recorded the audio output of the students speaking to
the ASR and analyzed speed of translation, quality and the types
of mistakes made. They found that the time