There's two ways this can happen. One is the obvious way, that the person is not skilled in interpreting the variety of accents used in the UK, so they transcribe according to their own interpretation. "Hole" for "hall", et al. The second is that they're cheating by downloading the sound file, running it through a speech recognition program, and uploading the resultant transcription, likely without checking it first. If this is the case, they're probably using an American English corpus, which would naturally interpret words like "hall" as it's pronounced with certain UK accents as "hole". This process could be automated by anyone with a certain level of skill in Web programming on either a Windows or a Linux platform, and they could go do whatever while their computer churns out a whole series of questionable transcriptions. As I've said elsewhere, I'm pretty sure someone's cheating on Redwood transcriptions this way, and it would not surprise me if they're now doing it on the ex-Imfuna, now SpeechInk, home inspection transcription HITs as well.
Hey Chuck Yes there is a lot of cheating on the Redwood ones, in lots of ways (random words, blah blah blah, c&ping part of the instructions etc and, as you say, ones that look like poor speech recognition). @Whimsy, I am very fortunate to have an excellent memory for the brand names, helped by having been surrounded by them for years, of course, but I do also spend a lot of time looking up the ones I haven't seen (entry phone brands, for example, are pretty alien to me as I have never lived in an apartment that had a working one!) I have also worked for countless property related offices (builders, architects, planning regulations etc) so am familiar with their *ways*. I guess that does make me more frustrated. Will try harder to CHILL!
You're the perfect worker for these HITs. SpeechInk should appreciate that and not let others fugg up your work. That's just my opinion - but yeah, the working knowledge of the spelling/terms/accents/etc. High accuracy and efficiency. I hope the bad editors get their rating knocked down.
You have to have 90 to review the audios and 70 to transcribe them so theoretically the best people are doing the reviews but in reality it's quite hard to drop below 90 unless you are really not trying!
I agree. I have seen the "rating" in the reviews that some give a HARD for a 10 second audio that says "White wall, with marks" and said that was hard to transcribe. A five year old that just learned english from watching the Brady Bunch could get that. I of course said "easy" on it. I have seen "There are too doors" While I have a lower than 99 score, mine is in the mid 90s. But I can't believe the things people are doing in these hits, but I admit they are some of my favs.
Huge sigh. Lots of low ratings today because people don't understand the ';' before a list rule. I've written to SpeechInk suggesting they increase the rating needed to do reviews as 90 is obviously too low, when so many are done so badly. Every wrong review is like a knife through my perfectionist heart.
I'm so irked right now, I just got a 94 rating back because someone corrected every single time I used '1x, 2x' etc and changed it into '1 times, 2 times' etc. Especially irked because I had several 100's in a row before that 94 and the style guide CLEARLY states 'Phrases such as "one times door" or "five times knives" (to signify 1 door and 5 knives, respectively), should be represented as "1x door" and "5x knives."' I've used the '1x' format many, many, many times and have never had it corrected so I'm irked!! I have no idea how SpeechInk is about responding to messages but I did send them a message from the dashboard and also quoted the style guide, hoping the rating will at least be looked into because those were the only corrections in the whole freakin' thing.
It isn't me dinging people.. I have only dinged 2 out of 60+ now. One was using "too" for "two" And the other was no capitalization on brand names.
Obviously you mean "2", Scott, since numerals are typed not words I've had brand names capitalized where they are not (NEFF when it is Neff). Takes only a few seconds to Google it and, if you're lucky like me, once is enough to remember in future. I have also had the "times/x" review annoyance Turkalicious though not for some time. It's mind-bendingly annoying but thankfully a low rating does not equal a rejection. Any edit on Imfuna's hits got the whole batch rejected. SpeechInk have been a mixed bag where it comes to responding. The only time I did get a response was when I complained about my "panelled" being edited to panel - they claim panel door is what the woman said but it was almost impossible to tell if she said panelled or panel so I don't think I should have lots marks for that. Where a reviewer has made an error which is against the guidelines, I write WARNING ERROR then my message on the rating. I pretend I am trying to help their client rather than just being p*ssed at a bad reviewer
That made me LOL I'm trying not to be irked about the 94. It's still a 94 I suppose. I'm just irked because it was such a simple 45 seconds and I got dinged for doing something that is 100% by the style guide. I'll get over it..... soon haha
I have an unfortunate perfectionist streak and if I lose my 100 rating I freak right out! That's why I come here and rant about it! (sorry, friends). I have to close my email when I am working because if that lil pop-up tells me a rating was less than 98 I freak about it and can't continue until I have had a moan and whine.
Had to share, I've done about 600 of these hits and this is my fav. "The carpets are filthy and it's a bit smelly in the house. " spoken so politely by the Mary Poppins sounding inspector. Love!
I've just had a cracker. One of the regular male voices saying there are "fag butts around the drain." Now to us Brits, this means cigarette stubs. But to Americans... well... I just kinda hope a US cousin gets that one to review Also had one of the regulars call himself a dickhead one day, I definitely was LOL at that.
I just saw quite a few I did reviews on that they type "Full Stop" or "Correcton" or "Times 6" sigh...
Oh man lol Of course I didn't get to be the one that got 'fag butts around the drain' I would have had a damn good giggle over that one.
Evidently someone had a "glock" on the wall. I doub't they had a 9mm hand gun on the wall. I have to assume it was a clock. I would believe it more in the US than the UK though!
Aha! I love this topic We don't say "aluminum" and we don't write it like that either. The correct word in UK English is aluminium. Remember that extra "i". AL-u-MINI-um Basically when the element was first discovered "aluminum" was the name given but in the UK it was changed to "-ium" to comply with the naming convention for other elements.
TOTALLY love the idea of having a Glock on the wall but since gun ownership is highly restricted and controlled in the UK, the chances of having hardware like that hanging about the house is very small (i.e. only a gangster with an illegal handgun and they won't be leaving it on display when the estate agent comes around to do the inventory!)