Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Google Voice: Hey, I love you and Jeff A. Victor

You may now know about Google Voice.  It's a phone number from Google and it gives you all kinds of tools for making calls, routing incoming calls, voicemail transcription, even embedding voice messages into a web page.

Concerning that last function, I was pressed for time the other day and decided to write up and record a quick dictation for my beginning French class.  The dictée was itself silly, nothing special, and you can hear it here:


I made my 37 second phone call, opened Google voice and embedded the message.  Total work time was about a minute and 10 seconds.  One thing weird was that, for several days, the transcription never appeared.  I thought, "That's not surprising, I spoke in French, and Google voice doesn't speak French."  (I should add, though, that it's English transcriptions are excellent.)

Lo and behold, the transcription turned out to be a translation--of sorts.  The line breaks are mine, as I thought it flowed better, but no other changes were made to spelling, capitalization or punctuation.


"Hey, I love you and Jeff A. Victor"
A Collaborative Work by Me and Google


Money. 8. To deal.
I will your college and I need to call me at the conditioning
I
read illegality not tree.  
I just lost access to.  
She me.
Yes place
I class.
If you see them.
Yes, Tower blocks.
Hey, I love you and Jeff. A. Victor.  
Yeah flaws and I. T. A point Plaza.  
Yes, Daniel from Amazon point. Com
I want to D. C. D. W with you.