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Greetings to you from WriteWorks columnist Miss
Staitett, bringing you incredibly "Foul Language" each month
— infamous and otherwise unforgettable fouled-up language: word
blunders from the real world of miscommunication. For any of us who
have embarrassed ourselves with message-altering typos, with words that
could be (and were) taken the wrong way, and with translation errors,
may you find comfort in these painful passages, knowing that, at least,
you were not alone.
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This month, we zero in on two memorable blunders resulting from
erroneous translations by speech recognition programs
— the software applications that translate words
spoken aloud into editable text on your computer.
While these "you-talk-it-types" programs
have improved over the years, they are still imperfect
and must be watched carefully, lest your spoken
words be misunderstood by your PC and thus mistranslated
(For example, you may say, "usage," but
the program may think you said, "you sage").
You don’t want to miss these, so read on . . .
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Our
first real-life speech-to-text blunder comes anonymously from an embarrassed
subscriber. In his own words: "We once had troubles with outgoing
e-mail at our company. So, as a backup to an important e-mail message
sent to a vendor, I faxed the message to the recipient as well. In my
cover letter, which I wrote to explain the reason for the faxed duplicate
message, I didn't notice the speech recognition error; my letter stated
that, 'We are having troubles with our females,' instead of correctly stating that, "We are
having trouble with our e-mail.'
Let me tell you, I had to send out a quick apology for the error, before
I was accused of sexist speech!"
This next blunder, also
from inaccurate text-to-speech translation, comes from your own, sweet
Miss Staitett. What happened was this: In closing a letter to my new
attorney, instead of, "I look forward to hearing from you," I didn't notice that the speech
recognition software translated it as, "I look forward to urine from you." How
embarrassing! Happily for me, I received no urine from him. The attorney had
a good sense of humor about it, and continues to rib Miss Staiteet about this.
Share Your Pain!
Have you ever fouled up your written or spoken communications
into something embarrassing, humorous, scandalous, or enraging? ‘Fess up
here! Write
and tell me: Miss Staitett. I will publish the best of our readers’
memorable mishaps and blunders of public record in upcoming editions of
Foul Language. Until then, watch your language!
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