On Mon, 25 Apr 2005, Timwi wrote:
Andy Rabagliati wrote:
There was some discussion of that. Two (very real) problems :-
* Editing. Voice editing sounds clumsy, and would sound like CamelCase :-)
the sound file is not an original article, but a reading of an
existing textual version.
At the conference, we discussed original content contribution by phone.
This is wikipedia-by-cellphone - you have to be able to contribute, or
it is not a wiki !
* Accents. If
an Indian is trying to understand what a Geordie or
someone from Barbados is saying, it might as well be in Afrikaans :-)
I'm not sure how large and how representative a sample of listeners you
have already surveyed, but I highly doubt this is a real problem.
recordings are obviously supposed to be spoken slowly and clearly.
Are you a native speaker of English? Where are you from? What accents do
you tend to have trouble understanding?
Yes, I am a native speaker, in a plummy version of the Queens English.
I am also well travelled.
I assure you, this problem is very real. Have you travelled to the North
of England ? You may be suprised - sometimes you will have /absolutely
no idea/ what they are talking about.
I lived for 10 years in the USA. Do you think an Indian would have any
idea what a native of Brooklyn was talking about ? English might be the
mother tongue for both of them - but Churchill famously said that
America and England were separated by a common language.
I have had to ask someone from Huntsville, Alabama, to repeat themselves
three times - and they were only spelling their name.
Cheers, Andy!