Google’s old motto: Don’t be evil. The new one: Don’t speak English.
If you thought the main problem with our “Real Actual Field Test” videos was that they made too much sense, you’re in luck. Now you can watch them with the sound off, reading along with subtitles provided by “Transcribe Audio,” a feature in beta testing that uses Google’s speech recognition technologies to automatically caption YouTube videos. The results? Pure Dada.
YouTube, we want to ask, DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF OUR NARRATOR’S MOUTH? The answer: Enh, some of them...
We’d estimate Google’s software correctly interprets somewhere between a third and half of the words in our video voiceovers. From a programming standpoint, that’s pretty impressive! From a comprehensibility standpoint, it’s total gibberish.
Watch our most recent Real Actual Field Test (number five), and see if you can follow along with the transcript pasted below.
My personal favorite part of this transcript comes during the scene where our Air Hogs Switchblade fails to launch correctly and whacks our cameraman Kevin. To my ear, it sounds like he says “Argh! Ow, man!” But Google hears it as “I health plan.” Oddly appropriate.
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
welcome to real action in field tests which relax a little incident
today we’re testing the spin master bear hugs switch weight remote aircraft are flying sort of that around and look in vain I was on it
what’s distinctive about this contraption is the way you can configure it flight either like a plane what would the twist suggesting like so of for the gate US troops died
here’s a look at it for nineteen US own mother
what happened
pretty cool it’s been this the numbers like so
an extension in the years the more conventional airplane note as you can see defies more or less street and I do to treat
how does this happen there’s like one tree in our old Texas sized parking lot and you fly straight
anyway it’s kind of hard to capture this home video but you can actually transform the thing from one vote to the other in midair we need to do a vertical takeoff from the launch pad US automotive and then shifted airplane noted and out come on he has to be done on purpose
here’s what it looks like we need more it from you have those we noted be made flight as you can the DC- it’s whirling around there
that’s fine your plan
in fairly shows upcoming this was a good flight down not that you can tell from my the footage
you can see you see it
the little things
the sky
not really
well it’s up there take my word for it I guess
ladies and gentlemen reached our scouts later on may six that’s because the nazis past that’s really all time in again yes
we also get it right indoors just doesn’t crazy it going to work toward really because it doesn’t do all that well you know very much wind but you have to have high ceilings so we recommend %uh how much he’ll win house or maybe a gothic style
also supposedly or as we say on the internet supposedly this which played the flyers best they can for just a couple of forty five degrees fahrenheit so when we got a nicer day we do that for a second afternoon of testing in the interest of science and also to get out of the meeting we have that changes to the capital plan laurin
I don’t know if the second day of tests like to really yielded all that much more information get captured some pretty good idea with this failed launch the air travelers
I
health plan
like I said we didn’t notice a huge difference in the handling from one day to the next summit the air temperature difference just wasn’t extreme enough but we did
oh for crying out loud
you guys are I mean the big do you not see them johnnie green things sticking around it’s not like the sport and for me
yes sir I don’t understand half we we have all this space right everybody at work with his charlie brown could cut all of a sudden
ridiculous
all right all in all we had a pretty good time playing with us which way at least one word can you not the truth and finally when we don’t have to admit at least it back into the wild
we know it was the right thing to do but you know that doesn’t mean we didn’t get choked up as did you want to listen he say about that in the country
so you’re seventy five this information helpful and we’ll see you next time for now the one who’s real actual field tests
END TRANSCRIPT
Thanks, Google! A huge improvement on the original!
So how about you? Happened across any amusingly shoddy automatic captions we should see?
