Win 7 PC speech to text (dictation) program for SL?

[Phoenix Gerhadsen]

Hi!  I recently got a dog bite that has taken my hand temporarily out of commission and made typing a real trial.  I use google voice on my mobile apps to translate speech to text  - is there a PC program I can use for this?

Again I need it for my Windows 7 PC - NOT mobile devices!!

I use Firestorm.

Help?

Edited July 26, 2017 by Phoenix Gerhadsen
left out critical info

[Alwin Alcott]

19 minutes ago, Phoenix Gerhadsen said:

Hi!  I recently got a dog bite that has taken my hand temporarily out of commission and made typing a real trial.  I use google voice on my mobile apps to translate speech to text  - is there a PC program I can use for this?

Again I need it for my Windows 7 PC - NOT mobile devices!!

I use Firestorm.

Help?

if there is a good one i seriously doubt it will plug in to SL viewers.

[Phoenix Gerhadsen]

It could work from the pc standalone

[Tari Landar]

There are loads of free TTS programs out there, it depends entirely on your needs though. Most(if not all) that are W10 compatible are also W7 compatible.

I'll list the ones I know of offhand(though there are others)

WordTalk, Balabolka, Natural Reader, Panopretor(Basic), Zabaware, Ultra Hal(they have a free version), Read4Me, ReadClip, ummm, I know there are some I'm forgetting, lol. I have never attempted to utilize one as an add-on to Sl, i'm not certain it exists, so it would have to be a standalone. BUT, there are groups and even a sim(I believe) that is run by folks with different impairments, some of which use TTS programs, and they may be able to better guide you on this than I am. I don't use my TTS for forum posts, because it's annoying as hell(and my typos are hilarious), I use it for my children's curriculum and my own studies, however the one I use is a program created by a friend and not available commercially yet (free or otherwise, lol).* I should add the program I use translates text and speech, not just one way(where most programs are one way-some listed above can do both, but you'll have to check them out individually to figure out which ones do, I don't use these ones, I just know they exist) so it's more than a TTS. 

Edited July 26, 2017 by Tari Landar
*clarity lol

[Tari Landar]

If you use chrome there's an extension you can get for it voicenote II , I believe. Braina is another that only does speech to text. Any program you use that is purely speech to text is likely to prove to be as much of a pain int he ass one handed as typing is, though, unless you're dictating paragraphs

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Phoenix Gerhadsen said:

It could work from the pc standalone

so not for sl ?...

that won't really help you a lot i think,

dictating, processing, correcting, copy, paste.... typing with one hand goes faster...

Edited July 26, 2017 by Alwin Alcott

[Phoenix Gerhadsen]

No, Alwin.  I said the exact opposite. A pc standalone will work, like Tari said.  There are many people that need these so I know they exist I am just not sure how to approach it. 

 

[Phoenix Gerhadsen]

Thank you Tari!  Great advice.  I will look for these sims.

As an aside, why cant I get he quotes to insert here?

[Tari Landar]

Are you clicking the word quote or the lil + sign instead? The + sign will give you a lil box below, mostly for multi-quotes but I tend to click it for all cuz it's easier for me to see, clicking just the word quote should put it right into your post, no pop up box with that one.(a screenshot will help better than my words, lol)

[Tari Landar]

Sorry in my example the + sign turns to a checkmark once you click it, lol

[Maybie Nightfire]

Windows comes with a Speech Recognition tool that might do what you are wanting.

Here is Microsoft's directions.  You will need to scroll down below the Win 8 portion to find the Win 7 instructions but other than where to click to start the program, they both work the same.

This is How To Geek's page.  It's a bit more detailed and has links to videos at the bottom.

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

2 hours ago, Maybie Nightfire said:

Windows comes with a Speech Recognition tool that might do what you are wanting.

Here is Microsoft's directions.  You will need to scroll down below the Win 8 portion to find the Win 7 instructions but other than where to click to start the program, they both work the same.

This is How To Geek's page.  It's a bit more detailed and has links to videos at the bottom.

   Do you use this? If so, how well does it work?  

[Maybie Nightfire]

I have, but not for SL.  I once did research on several different applications to determine the best one for doing transcripts.  As far as the ability to recognize words and be trained to specific speakers, it is just as good as most.   I have my suspicions that many of the "free" and cheap packages just use WSR with their own interface.  Dragon's Naturally Speaking was slightly better than the others and has a ton of other little bells and whistles but it also gets rather too intrusive to me. 

 

"how well does it work?"

I hate to be negative since I just offered it as an option but in all honesty, all these tool are less them optimal.  IIRC they all gave errors in about 6-8% of the words even after training.  How many times have you laughed at what Siri thinks you said?  Expand that from a local database lookup of a few keywords  to a full language, homonyms and working with hundreds or even thousands of words at a time.  Human typists are still the best way to go, in my opinion.  But if you need an alternative to typing, it's OK.  For transcripts it will have to be corrected by hand later which does not save you any time but for short conversions in SL with humans accustomed to reading through typos it should work.

 

[Tari Landar]

My personal experience says..typing one handed is a far better idea than using a dictation program, although it can be handy, none of them are all that great, and you're going to likely have to go in and change words that it doesn't get. I use a TTS mostly for reading text, and even then they are all hit or miss (like read versus read, lead versus lead, etc...it can end up sounding kinda goofy if you mean one and it reads the other, but it's still understandable. Language detection is still a, quite, flawed technology, overall (even those currently working in the field to improve it will tell you this, lol).