Dragon Naturally Speaking is gaining ground in the
translation industry. I attended a session on Dragon given by Tom Fennell and
Andrew Levine at the last ATA conference in October, which really made me
realize how much I am under-utilizing the program. Then in December, Mario
Chávez reviewed Dragon in the ATA Chronicle from the perspective of medical
translation and handling PDF documents. After recently editing a few documents
obviously done with dictation software, I started pondering how this tool fits
into a translator’s workflow and how it is best used to increase productivity
while avoiding the pitfalls.
I’ve noticed more and more translators using Dragon when
I edit. Keep in mind that this fact should not be obvious to an editor or a
reader. This tool is relatively new to the industry and I think many
translators aren’t used to proofreading texts produced by Dragon and so they
miss things like “March to” instead of “March 2” because their brains simply
don’t expect it to be there.
Don’t run away yet. Dragon is definitely a wonderful
addition to your toolkit…IF you think faster than you can type, as was
mentioned in the ATA conference presentation. With that said, I know a lot of
people who think that they are such speed-demons on a keyboard, Dragon is
useless for them, but Dragon does more than just accelerate typing.
The advantages:
·
Lighten
your load. First and foremost, it just makes translating easier. Plus, if you put forth less
effort to translate the same number of words, in theory, you can translate a
few more of them…or just take the afternoon off!
·
Focus on
the source. If you’re translating a PDF document, you’re usually forced to
go back and forth looking at the source then the target, then the source and then
target, etc. Dragon virtually eliminates this problem. This was also mentioned
in the ATA chronicle review of the software.
·
Hear your
translation. We’ve long heard that reading a translation out loud can help eliminate
things that just don’t sound right and with Dragon, this is not a separate step.
·
Translate
faster. I think most people translate much faster with Dragon. It makes lists
of phone numbers or lab values and especially dates a breeze. Even on complex
medical documents, I am still faster than I was before using Dragon, even
though I often do a lot of research.
·
Work
faster. It’s quite easy to set up automatic shortcuts with Dragon so, for
example, when you receive a job request and you’re all booked up, you can say “all
booked up” and have it write an entire e-mail for you just as if you had
created a shortcut to insert a paragraph at the push of a button. Not to
mention, you can update your Facebook status, close and open windows and
programs and lots more.
·
Translate
consistently and translate better. The more I use Dragon, the faster my
brain seems to be able to translate and remember previous translations
accurately. That may sound questionable, and maybe it is. I can only speak from
my own experience. I’ve certainly at least noticed that increasing my
translation speed and saying my translations out loud has resulted in fewer
instances of having to go back and see how certain terms and phrases were
handled.
·
Multitask.
Dragon eliminates the absolute requirement that you must be looking where you
are typing. For example, I might use Dragon to type in a search on Google or in
a dictionary while I’m reading my source. Or, I might have looked something up
and be reading the information I need as I’m dictating my newly found terminology
into my translation.
The pitfalls:
·
Tomato: tomayto or tomahto? You need to know how to pronounce what you’re typing.
You might think you know how to pronounce it, but Dragon might not agree with
you. Don’t worry, either you or Dragon will learn.
·
Proofread
differently. You have to proofread for mistakes that you know that you
never would have made. I recently had Dragon decide that when I said “NM” I
meant “New Mexico.” I didn’t. It was an acronym for an institution.
·
Heavy
program. If you’re using a computer that is on its last leg, it probably
won’t be able to handle Dragon, but most decent computers don’t seem to have
problems.
·
No
distractions. Yes, that is a pitfall…and an advantage. No listening to
music or other sound. However, I do sometimes manage to listen to music through
the headset and it doesn’t seem to affect Dragon.
How much can Dragon increase your productivity? Well,
that depends. I can say that just by adding Dragon to my own workflow, I’ve
increased my speed by about 25% on highly technical jobs and by up to 100% on
less technical jobs, including careful proofreading. There’s certainly no doubt
that the software is now on my list of absolutely essential tools but remember,
don’t be afraid to test yourself and Dragon and you might be surprised, but in
the end, proofread carefully.
Note: I am in no way affiliated with Dragon and there are
several other dictation software programs available, it just so happens that my
experience has been with Dragon.
