Sandra,

Sorry it took me a while to get back to you, but since I had only posted once to this forum a couple months ago, and don't read German, I have had difficulty figuring out the mechanics of even signing in, not to mention knowing how to go about giving a reply.
The only thing that occurs to me is to use the Vocabulary Editor to use an Alternate Written Form for all the American style words that get transcribed that you wish to be British style. Certainly logic would be that if you chose the British versus American accent, one would expect the proper style of word to be transcribed. Unfortunately, logic does not always prevail.

This all reminds me about a funny exchange that happened a few years ago between my nurse who was from Texas, but had what I would describe as a "deep South" American accent. She was talking on the phone to someone in the rehab department who was from Britian. They were having some difficulty understanding each other, and part way thru the conversation my nurse started to laugh and said to the rehab person: "It's hard to believe that we are both speaking the King's proper English!"

Mark

Zitat von sandra_dragon

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Hi Mark,

Good to see in the Forum. Perhaps you could help me with some difficulties I have using the program with an English user. Although I've chosen a British accent before I started training for this English user, the program produces American English words, although the British English versions are available too. What I say is definitely more British than American and therefore I do not understand why NaturallySpeaking always produces for example program instead of programme (BTW: I typed this last word).

I know, you are American, but perhaps you have an idea about how to solve this problem. I, personally, feel there should be an option in the vocabulary section to choose your accent, which should limit the vocabulary that the program writes to either British or American.

Any ideas?

Best,
Sandra

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The only thing that occurs to me is to use the Vocabulary Editor to use an Alternate Written Form for all the American style words that get transcribed that you wish to be British style. Certainly logic would be that if you chose the British versus American accent, one would expect the proper style of word to be transcribed. Unfortunately, logic does not always prevail.

Dear Sandra,

I write from (at this moment...) sunny Bedfordshire, and have long since given up hope that our fire-eating friend was really a Brit! Not even when he puts on his UK disguise does he really hack it - sadly.

I wholly agree with you that UK English gives 'program' every time - until you do as Mark suggests above, when I find that I get 'programme' every time: doing an alternative written form is infinitely more bulletproof than trying to use 'Written Word/Spoken Word' in the Vocabulary Editor. I would like to think that that will completely solve your 'program' problem.

I think we have to acknowledge that in UK English both spellings do 'exist' because of program meaning a software program. No doubt we should have strangled that spelling at birth, but we didn't, and I think that we are stuck with it.

NOW, whilst we are on the subject, my bugbear (wonder how that will translate in German?!) is 'check' versus 'cheque'. No matter how many times I train it in context (and its being a homonym I think means I cannot do more, but do let me know if I am wrong), I find that obtaining 'cheque' when I want it is VERY infrequent.

I cannot help but feel that somewhere deep in the software (like VERY deep, way deeper than mere mortals like us can get to), there is something which gives a much heavier frequency weighting to 'check', and basically cannot believe that we mean 'cheque'.

Basically, I think UK English gives us e.g. 'flavour' for 'flavor', but is not sophisticated enough to deal with 'cheque', and maybe 'programme' falls into the same trap.

All surmise on my part, of course, but I hope at least that makes you feel you are not alone!

I have to end by expressing my speechless admiration for people who use words like alliteration correctly when English is not their mother tongue - hats off to you Rudiger and Marius!

Ed

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I have to end by expressing my speechless admiration for people who use words like alliteration correctly when English is not their mother tongue - hats off to you Rudiger and Marius!

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Ed,

perhaps you would change your mind if you knew what "alliteration" is in German, and you may not believe this, but it's "alliteration"! We should never forget that in many ways, language wise, we're coming from the same sources, and that our Roman forefathers didn't just teach us law and culture, but also how to speak and write. However, minding the differences, I am also aware that you also carry a "dash of Viking" in your heritage, among other things, and if you're not too young, you will perhaps know what I'm referring to. But then, talking about languages, there is no such thing as "undiluted English (or German) blood" over any amount of time.

My best wishes to all the people in the UK, and let's hope you'll be still in the game in a few days time!

Rüdiger

Hi all

just to reinforce what Ed said earlier, program and programme are actually two different words in British English.

Programme referring to, for example, TV programme, concert programme etc

Program I believe on their first to a computer program in UK English.

In terms of dialects I understand the problem, I am very British and likewise very Scottish and we have no accent options under UK English speech models which can present certain difficulties with quite a few words.

in terms of the word cheque it is very interesting that there is a UK vocabulary entry for the word paycheque and not paycheck. I have just set the written form for paycheque to cheque and obviously dictate the word paycheque.

Lindsay

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in terms of the word cheque it is very interesting that there is a UK vocabulary entry for the word paycheque and not paycheck. I have just set the written form for paycheque to cheque and obviously dictate the word paycheque.

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Lindsay

I'm not sure, but this might be useful find for Ed to incorporate to his dictation, in terms of using the word paycheck and defining an alternate written form for it, such as check -- doing all this using the UK spelling of course.

However, if Britain was only willing to adopt a little more to the European system, perhaps they would come to terms with abandoning paychecks altogether, as for instance in our country, they are antique by now, although still live in France, but most likely the manufacturers of Dragon had that in mind when they set up the UK version. -- Act locally, but think globally!

Rüdiger

Rüdiger

I thought I had said that and I am not sure whether it is my fault (because I sent the message rather quickly) or the fault of the Google translator which I notice even translate English to its version of English. But just to reiterate I have set the written form of paycheque to cheque to get round the problem that Ed has.

Lindsay

Lindsay,

Interesting thought about 'paycheque': I may well adopt that, although I prefer not to upset Dragon too much by turning it on its head with wholly different pronunciations. For the DEL button, I say 'Buffalo' (because I found saying Delete sometimes did more than I wanted it to) and I feel that must confuse Dragon horribly.....

I do feel that having trained phrases like 'a cheque in settlement' 'cheque for my firm's fees' [very important, that one....] and 'send me a cheque', Dragon might pay me some attention: but no. Heigh ho.

Yes, Rüdiger, I entirely agree - I had been going to write that in the UK they are proposing to abolish cheques by some ludicrously early date like 2016...and of course American companies would hate to build in redundancy, even in words!

I telephoned our local house painter last week to enquire if he was happy to give me his bank details so I could settle his invoice via BACS (Bankers Automatic Clearing System).

His response?

"I'd prefer a cheque, Edward - I don't do electronics"!

So I think Nuance can dream on for a while: paperless living is not yet with us.

ED

Ed,

Perhaps it's a good thing that the painter doesn't do electronics, because if he did his painting electronically, you wouldn't be very happy with it, would you?

Rüdiger

Thanks For Your Information