Dragon Speak, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Dragon Speech-to-text, Dragon Dictate… the world’s leading speech recognition software has many names. While some are made up by users who can’t remember the name, the one thing that’s remained constant is the Dragon part.
Over the years, we’ve heard all the jokes. Clients will talk about our trainers being dragon slayers and on some days when their dragon is “misbehaving”, we’ll get a call. Dragons can breathe fire are portrayed as wise or powerful creatures and operate in a fantasy realm as in the ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ film series. Perhaps the original thought was that as a user you’d be adopting these characteristics.
Originally called Dragon Dictate, the software would require… you… to… dictate… each… word. While it was an improvement for single finger typists, the software was in its infancy. Being able to control your PC by voice and turn speech into text was seen as the future… the stuff of ‘Star Trek’.
A few releases later, Scansoft turned Dragon Dictate into Dragon NaturallySpeaking. A real mouthful of a product name, it was designed to explain that you no longer had to speak one word at a time but could actually get better results by dictating in phrases. Using the context of the words, leveraging more computing resources and better algorithms, the speech recognition software was improving and learning from its user.
Correcting misrecognitions, customising the vocabulary and allowing the software to mold to the specific nuances of each user’s voice was making it a whole lot better. Being able to dictate at speeds of up to 160 words per minute was turning it into a potent software programme that could increase productivity for everyone.
While the Mac version has been re-dubbed Dragon Dictate, which kind of says it all, the PC version is now simply known as Dragon under Nuance. Having amassed hundreds of thousands of users across the globe, Dragon has paid its dues and should be the first word people think of when you say “voice recognition”.