[lg policy] iPhone voice recognition Siri doesn't have Spanish: Why not?

[Harold Schiffman]

iPhone voice recognition Siri doesn't have Spanish: Why not?


Fox News reports that strangely the new iPhone speech recognition
assistant, Siri, does not come with Spanish support, even though it has
English, French, and German support. Siri, which is still in beta development
stage, understands a range of commands that can be used to operate the
phone.

Ariel Coro, founder of Tu tecnologia, reports that: "Spanish is a
fairly difficult
language to interpret for natural voice recognition since there are many
variations which sound completely different to a voice recognition software."

Coro adds that Spanish support would likely require training the software, a
capability not included in Siri at the moment.

Although the confusion at Apple's neglect is understandable, since Spanish is
not an insignificant language especially in the United States, the arguments
in the article justifying it are questionable. Spanish is just as geographically
widespread as English and French, and Apple went to the lengths to provide
United Kingdom and Australian versions of the English software.

Moreover, what are these "many variations" unique to Spanish that are so
difficult for voice recognition software? Is it true that Spanish
naturally difficult
for software to interpret?

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2011/10/05/apples-siri-
iphone-4s-app-can-speak-to-in-different-languages-but-not-in/?
test=faces#ixzz1a1IUp3gC

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