Check Your Broken English
By: Henrik Ståhl
Tags: Speech Recognition, Podcast, Tech, Journalism, Algorithms

During the past few years, the text-to-speech technology has covered a lot of ground. The robotic, monotonous audio of the past — often ridiculed in various cartoon sitcoms such as The Simpsons, Futurama, and Family Guy — is rapidly turning into nothing but a distant memory.

Just have a look at Play, the Chrome extension/app/web platform that lets you listen to articles from Medium and other curated blogs. Or Narro, the tool that turns your reading into a podcast. Just to name a few examples.

But what about the other way around? Is speech-to-text becoming equally immersive and reliable as text-to-speech, and with the same pace?

Well.

We might have been just a little bit naive, or overconfident about our English speaking abilities, but we figured that, hey — we should definitely generate automated transcripts of our podcast episodes!

We decided to give Smab a try. It’s still in beta, but what the heck. What could possibly go wrong?

How about: almost everything.

We’re not saying that we regret it. Not at all. Quite the opposite. How could we, with such a hilarious result? I mean, the world would’ve never had the chance to laugh at, and create memes of, one of the most classical phrases of all time it it wasn’t for broken English: All your base are belong to us.

So, consider this our tribute to Zero Wing and all of our fellow members of the Broken English Club out there.

Check Your Facts proudly presents:

Check your fax!

Check Your Fax broadcast and the Digital Journal of Some Rocks

George W. Bush: I hear rumors on the internet’s.

Henrik: Greetings from Stockholm and the block this lava. My name is Hamitic.

Dávid: And my name is David, and you’re listening to the Check Your Facts focus.

H: Well tell me David, what exactly is the Check Your Fax broadcast — or should I say, what we would be?

D: Great question. So it will be a fourth because the bulk media and journalism, and since we’re both from Europe it will be centered only Europe European countries and they also beyond other countries which I’m not usually being covered in the media and journalism podcasts, at least not the ones we know and listen to.

“Yes, it will be a standalone trampled say a first grade that is old and the we will be talking with her about the Slick community, about the journalism Europe, and about all the nice things that happened to her since she started the Catholic community.”

H: Yeah, for those of you who don’t already know, Stockholm is the capital of Sweden in northern Europe, impetus lava is the capital of Slovakia. Right?

D: Oh yes, you’re right. The two of us met in the US lack community Digital Journal of Some Rocks.

H: And therefore it’s quite fitting that our very first guests, you know first episode this is just a teaser, but in the very first episode we will interview Lena Team, the founder of the Digital Journalist of Some Rocks community.

D: Yes, it will be a standalone trampled say a first grade that is old and the we will be talking with her about the Slick community, about the journalism Europe, and about all the nice things that happened to her since she started the Catholic community. And just to add, the Slick community counts now hundreds of journalists from not only Europe but I would say the whole world.

H: Yeah, and of course we will also ask some questions about Lean Left Him and who she is and what she does. Because the arm I don’t know about you Dovid but I’m not one hundred percent sure about what what Lina TM the US update today basis. I mean we both know that she’s the commander in chief of the Digital Journalism Rocks community but I’m, I don’t know what she does for a living, so to speak.

D: Now she’s differently a mystery to me yeah.

H: So you should definitely stay tuned for the very first episode all the Check Your Facts podcast, the first of hundreds of episodes we hope, with yes yeah with a bunch of grade and interesting guests.

We cheese.

D: Yeah we plan to do this book because two weekly now you can go into a culture of our website, we cheese Check Your Facts dot E. you. Esteem in Europe E. You are. You can follow us on the old the social networks and it would be so wonderful if you could just scrabble some iTunes or Google Play or where ever you found us. Just remember: Check Your Facts don’t you.

H: And we should probably also mention the newsletter, because it would be awesome if you subscribe to our newsletter since we intend to blog about this little adventure all hours. Will blog about the episodes and some useful tips and tools.

D: And don’t forget to tell your friends about this because it’s gonna be a hell of a journey.

H: Yeah. That’s the perfect ending.