Woman eases release from a cotton disability.
August 29, 2011 6:49 PM   Subscribe

 
Computers are so silly. Back in college when a friend was studying abroad in France, I tried to send her an audio message using one of those text-to-speech thingys. You'd think they'd be able to pronounce "Paris" correctly. But you would be wrong.
posted by phunniemee at 7:02 PM on August 29, 2011 [1 favorite]


Sank roofer naked me laugh found town.
posted by swift at 7:32 PM on August 29, 2011


Well of course the computer will spit out some bullshit. They slurred their words, mumbled, failed to articulate, and did super-fast speaking. It's pretty annoying actually how they didn't even give the computer a chance to transcribe their words correctly. Guess then it wouldn't have been as irreverently HILARIOUS as this clip apparently is.
posted by ReeMonster at 7:40 PM on August 29, 2011 [7 favorites]


I have to agree with ReeMonster. They wrote a script with the sole intent of fucking with the computer (which, admittedly, is pretty terrible). It's amusing, but not really up to the usual Rhett and Link standard, IMO.
posted by asnider at 7:44 PM on August 29, 2011


It's interesting that the one line that was never munged was "Never guess what I'm holding in my hand right now."

That piece of dialogue must now be included in every video uploaded to YouTube. Especially the cat videos.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:44 PM on August 29, 2011


Don't they want to have bodies?
posted by Smedleyman at 7:45 PM on August 29, 2011 [10 favorites]


These guys seem like douchfusses, but I like the experiment. Thanks!
posted by yellowbinder at 7:48 PM on August 29, 2011


Well of course the computer will spit out some bullshit. They slurred their words, mumbled, failed to articulate, and did super-fast speaking. It's pretty annoying actually how they didn't even give the computer a chance to transcribe their words correctly. Guess then it wouldn't have been as irreverently HILARIOUS as this clip apparently is.

Well, yeah. But the point is that this auto-captioning is supposed to work on Just Any Old Video; what they're demonstrating is what happens when it's exposed to to the real world, where people post youtube videos full of slurred, mumbled, inarticulate fast speech.

Also: How dare they do something that resulted in humor, instead of something boring! The jerks!
posted by Tomorrowful at 8:04 PM on August 29, 2011 [10 favorites]


Five.

Five!
posted by scody at 8:35 PM on August 29, 2011


This experiment was not carried out according to the proper procedures of the scientific method. Therefore, I cannot, in good conscience, find it amusing.

Maybe it's the meds, but after all the humorless people i've ran into today that take things way too seriously, i can't tell if you are joking or not. That kind of scares me. :\

I learned of the captions when i was on a Cooking with Dog video (not sure if that one or not) where someone suggested doing it. Hilarity ensued. You think it does badly with regular english? Try heavy accent. ;) Very surreal. ;)
posted by usagizero at 8:47 PM on August 29, 2011 [1 favorite]


I love Youtube auto captioning.

It doesn't matter if the speech is slurred or not. I think odd voices also make it spit bullshit. Mel Blanc and Jim Henson absolutely break the thing (with profoundly amusing results.)
posted by louche mustachio at 9:02 PM on August 29, 2011


I'm sad Google auto-captioning fails so horrendously. I'm deaf and 99.95% of posted videos aren't captioned, so this is often all I got. I suppose it'll be another fifteen or twenty years before the technology comes close to being passable... that is, if Google doesn't get bored and drop the feature.

Why so long? I remember my Macintosh Quadra 840av, whose OS came with speech recognition for speech-to-text and basic commands. The former worked if I spoke slowly and crisply — probably the same threshold required for Google. And that computer came out way back in nineteen ninety-three.
posted by Jubal Kessler at 9:32 PM on August 29, 2011 [4 favorites]


Now I think I know how Ryan Trecartin writes dialogue for his videos.
posted by coolxcool=rad at 10:07 PM on August 29, 2011


Is this something I would need to cotton to donate your pole to comprendar?
posted by thebrokedown at 11:42 PM on August 29, 2011


It's amusing, but not really up to the usual Rhett and Link standard, IMO.

This is the second Rhett and Link thing I've seen, and both were said to be sub-par by their standards. Apparently they jumped the shark before I noticed them. However, via a friend who saw the Vicious Dogs commercial1, I am now a Vicious Dogs devotee, so for this I thank them.

Oh, and I have a G2 phone with various Google apps including Google Voice, and the automatic translations2 of my voicemails are always good for a laugh. Not for actually knowing what the caller said. But for a laugh.

1which is odd because she lives in Chicago and I live in LA less than a mile from the damn place

2in my voice queue right now: "OR if you would. Loaded me so cool. And when you broke my it in to. Just many, and the S Q just wrote down in the problem me breakdown from reality. Some of the to, bro. Give me then this. Q, But. And whatever the bridge across you all dog. You know this is office so if you are."
posted by davejay at 1:18 AM on August 30, 2011


Surely by now there is a "Metafilter's own" Purplemonkeydishwasher who could weigh in on this?

No?

Well, then, I am immediately reminded of this From the Criterion edition of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," wherein they've included the re-Engished translations of the original Japanese translations of the original English.
posted by ShutterBun at 3:08 AM on August 30, 2011 [1 favorite]


I thought this was funny. If this isn't up to their standards, then I'm even happier as that means prizes await. I thought the dude with glasses has a great comedic presence compared to the guy with lighter colored hair. Dude with glasses really loses himself in the performance. Even moreso when I watched a few others.

I guess this is part of the genre of comedy/male duo/singing thing like Flight of the Condors and going back forever (eg, smothers brothers?). But it seems to be getting more of a bump with Internet distribution like YouTube and iTunes. Maybe bc it fits really well with short, non-contextualizdd skits?
posted by scunning at 7:00 AM on August 30, 2011


I'm sad Google auto-captioning fails so horrendously. I'm deaf and 99.95% of posted videos aren't captioned, so this is often all I got. I suppose it'll be another fifteen or twenty years before the technology comes close to being passable... that is, if Google doesn't get bored and drop the feature.

Amen. I strongly encourage people who make videos to caption them. It's not that hard and it makes a huge difference to the hearing impaired.
posted by desjardins at 8:16 AM on August 30, 2011 [1 favorite]


Man, these guys must be TOTALLY HILARIOUSLY AWESOME in their other stuff, because I was actually crying I was laughing so hard at this.

But then, I am also one of those people who, when he first discovered Babelfish, used it to translate random nonsense sentences into foreign languages, then translate them back into english, back and forth with hilarious (to me) results. And as a kid, used to get hours of entertainment taping myself on my high-speed dubbing boombox, and playing around with speeding things up tremendously and/or slowing them down tremendously.

FAQ!
FACTS!
posted by antifuse at 8:42 AM on August 30, 2011


antifuse - you've seen Translation Party, I hope?

Alternatively, "We translate the look of your party, I hope?"
posted by desjardins at 8:49 AM on August 30, 2011


I had not! But now I have! Yay, there goes my lunch hour!
posted by antifuse at 9:00 AM on August 30, 2011


antifuse - here's the original post about it.
posted by desjardins at 9:48 AM on August 30, 2011


they didn't even give the computer a chance to transcribe their words correctly.

This is exactly why, when I play Telephone and the person ahead of me mumbles, I right away exclaim, "No fair!" Why should I be held accountable for someone else's refusal to speak clearly?
posted by stebulus at 9:55 AM on August 30, 2011


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