BBC Program: Brainy DS Game Discriminates Against Scottish Accents

February 5, 2008
Computer and Video Games reports that Nintendo DS title Brain Training (known as Brain Age in the U.S. market) was accused of discriminating against Scottish accents on a U.K. news program this week.

The BBC show Watchdog, hosted by Nicky Campbell, devoted a five-minute segment to the issue on Monday evening, saying that the DS game "clearly discriminated against" certain  U.K. accents.

Radio reporter Michelle Livesey of Manchester got the game as a holiday gift and was frustrated when the game's speech recognition routine didn't work for her:
Basically you have to say the different colours that flash up on the screen as quickly as possible. I'm saying, blue, blue, blue and it's saying no, even though it was blue. Then it got to yellow. I'm going, 'yeller' and everyone's saying to me you need to be a bit posher. You need to say, 'yellow' and as soon as I did, it picked it up.

GP: I've had some issues myself with the speech recognition on the DS. Maybe my Philly accent is to blame?

Comments

Microsoft Office has voice recognition and while you can train it with your voice, if your accent is too heavy, it will still screw up. As I am a part time teacher on the weekends for HUSD (Hayward Unified School District), I used to try students who had a significant accent, and the technology just doesn't work that well. So when I demo it today, I use a student that has a light accent-to-none, and then tell the others that accents don't work so well if they want to use the technology. This has not been "fixed" for Office 2007...and likely won't be "fixed" anytime soon. Compensating for heavy accents is technologically difficult.

LOL, ah well what can you do? Recognising complex input like audio/video is no simple task; sometimes applications fall short.

Gift.

How is it racist? i mean just because it doesnt recognize your voice or accents.....its not like its being targeted at ppl to point out there own speech problems or anything. But the part of this that makes me laugh is that this is a Teaching Game isnt it? so isnt doing its job when it points out any possible errors lol it's like getting pissed off at a cop for pulling you over its nothing personal.

Uve been SKIDed

Discrimination is not racism, you can be discriminated against for being old, for being female, for having a strange accent, that's not because of your race, that's because of your age, gender or dialect, as was mentioned umpteen times in this thread, the UK itself has several dialects, as does the UK, if someone complained that they couldn't understand a newsreader because of a deep Texan accent, is that racism?

Hm, well these brain training games were incredibly popular in Japan originally, and I know that there are various types of accents there as well. It makes me wonder how they originally delt with the issue.

Of course being taught to enunciate clearly isn't necessarily a bad thing... In the original segment, the radio reporter admits she mispronounced it as "yeller." Of course her friends who suggested that she be more specific knew what she was saying, but we're talking about the issue of humans vs computers in that case. It's not as if she was incapable of saying "yellow."

IMO Nintendo had two choices in this case: either load up the memory with thousands of various alternate pronunciations of certain words (words for colors for example), or rely on the player to enunciate.

Wow, people can start claiming that they are being discriminated against when the game doesn't work right for you?

I'm left-handed... I want every controller-producing company of the past 20 years to pony up some reparations to my victim-ass.

I hope no one is going to actually take this seriously.

It is ~incredibly~ difficult to write voice recognition software which can interpret ~one~ individual's idiolect, let alone any accent or dialect the world over, and I'm guessing Brain Training doesn't have training capability because that's a massive project on its own, way too big for a little novelty factor in a DS game. Voice recognition is complex business - my head spun even contemplating the near infinite factors and problems and language varieties you need to look into to build even a basic one when I studied NLP.

@mogbert:

"It isn’t discrimination, you AREN’T SPEAKING CORRECTLY!
There IS a propper way to say “Blue”, there is a correct way of saying “Yellow”. It is in Websters.

There isn’t a Southern way of saying it, and a Northern way of saying it, and a Scottish way of saying it. There are just different ways to mangle the language so that those around you can understand you."

Clearly you know nothing of descriptive language studies. Hope you don't go into NLP XP You won't get very far if you can't comprehend the idea of valid language varieties. Language isn't controlled by dictionaries, nor does it have some 'pure' form which can be 'mangled', nor is it normal for everyone to speak exactly the same way. The only "proper" way to pronounce a word is generally one more socially acceptable than an alternative, something decided by petty humans and their silly social stigmas, not the language itself.

and no im not illiterate or w.e.... just rly pissed off

Talk about an overreaction.

"Oh no, I'm being discriminated against!"

Voice recognition of all sorts frequently has trouble with accents.. this is not discrimination, nobody is trying to put you down, it is just a fact of this kind of software.

I'm from Cornwall, and my father has an extremely broad accent, and even today cannot use voice recognition on various important phone services. Does it suck? Yes. Is it Discrimination? No, he just accepts it because he understands its unreasonable to expect the people making the software to teach it every single accent on the planet.

The "Blue" issue isn't one of accent, it's the "BL" blend blows out a puff of air when spoken, and this air overloads the DS mic. Try talking with your mouth aimed slightly away from the mic.

And "Yeller?" Learn to speak.
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~

We are at least 10 years from universal voice recognition software that can fit on a DS cartridge. As already stated, even the best of VRS is not capable of disecting all possible accents in all possible languages.

It takes a lot of resources to even decode proper english let alone different accents.

I think before people start screaming "discrimination" at the top of their lungs they should do some research into software limitations first.

God, some people just jump on the 'it's because of my race' bandwagon at the drop of a hat! I mean, seriously, just because you have sub-optimum performance with something doesn't mean it's because of your race. In this case, it IS a part of how you speak, but that's hardly the game's fault. They can't program a game with every way to say every word in the game, unless they gave you the chance to program your own voice pattern in... a bit much for a DS game.

This is a textbook issue of inventing problems. Hell, I have problems understanding heavy accents. No wonder poor Dee Es can't make out the words :).

OMG c0nsp1r4cy!!1111

Perhaps the reasonable, more "journalistic" approach would be that the voice recognition software is imperfect. However, conspiracy theories generate more attention.

I've also had problems with the Brain Age speech portions. I guess its time to sue.

Bwahahahahahaha!

I used to have a problem with mumbling a lot, occasionally still do. The game must be discriminating against me too.

I dunno, "blue" has been a matter of accent in my experience. I'm from the South Jersey shore, which may have some of that philly accent, but mainly has an accent of "never enunciate anything ever!". So my blue's tend to come out as "bluh", or something like that, and I feel like I have to yell "blooooo!" to get it right.

I'm interested in seeing how things change as voice recognition becomes more prominent (or maybe even mandatory). Whether software writers can make more complex programs that recognize more accents, or whether society as a whole is forced to adjust their way of speaking to a singular form. Maybe THEN we'd have an actual discrimination issue on our hands.

It's not discrimination, just voice recognition that is not yet up to the standard of recognizing everyone.

In Britain we are lucky in my opinion to have a wealth of colorful and quirky accents. But there is a huge difference between between not being catered for and being discriminated against.

I'd like to point out here that, speaking with a Scottish accent myself, I had no trouble at all when I had a go at "Brain Training", it came as second nature to make a slight adjustment to my accent.

@~the1jeffy

There are worse bastardisations of the English language than the Manchurian accent. Trust me! (Just in writing this my browser is demanding I spell "bastardisations" with the American "bastardizations". It's that stuff that bugs me personally!)

Well guys, to be fair, this was released in numerous locations. Localization shouldn't necessarily be out the realm of consideration, especially considering how different people talk.

Sure one for each and every unique dilect is a bit much. But if they can release three different pokemon carts . . . ya know?

It seems somebody has been reading the ever excellent UK:Resistance blog. There's an appropriate comment on their site that's worth reproducing here:

Dr Kawashima: "So, I've managed to make passable voice recognition software work at a suitable speed for gaming and with small enough demands to work on a portable console. Voice regonition is one of the greatest computing challenges so to be honest I'm quite pleased with myse- "

Campbell: "Does it recognize French?"

Dr Kawashima: "No, it's only really designed to - "

Campbell: "The French are humans too, you racist. What about a leper, who's lips are falling off what would he do?"

Dr Kawashima: "I don't think it would work as it's- "

Campbell: "He's also Jewish"

Dr Kawashima: " -not designed to cope with that."

Campbell: "I DON'T BELIEVE WHAT I'M HEARING!"

Wow, the UK is really copying the US on this whole anti-videogame issue. They just need their own JT now.

On a serious note, I guess I'm discriminatory because I find it hard to understand people speaking english with heavy german accents.

What's funny is as I was getting pissed at the game for not understanding my accent. I swore in french in the mic and the game took it for blue or yellow(can't remember), it was pretty funny. :D

I'd like to hear NIKOLI's response to being called discriminatory.

It's not just dialect though, there's different ways of saying 'Yellow' depending on which side of London you are on, North or South.

Discriminating was a dumb word to use, but I suppose an News article along the lines of 'Shock! Horror! Speech Recognition is still pretty dodgy, same as it has been for years!' wouldn't really catch the public interest.

Some of these voice controlled games on other systems don't like US Southern accents either. >:(

Personal experience: Psi Ops.

Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
Nightwng2000 NW2K Software http://www.facebook.com/nightwing2000 Nightwng2000 is now admin to the group "Parents For Education, Not Legislation" on MySpace as http://groups.myspace.com/pfenl

Voice recognition with current technology discriminates against everyone. Unless the software is set to one person's voice, it will only operate about somewhere around 80 percent efficiency, and that's at best.

A common principle of linguistics is that everyone has an accent, of sorts. There is no "standard" language.

"Discrimination"? What utter bullshit. I think my fellow countrymen have had a wee bit too much to drink.

Assuming Brain Training is exactly the same thing as Brain Age, I as a Scotsman have a thick Glaswegian accent and have had no problems with the game. My Canadian wife, however, with a thick Ontarian accent, cannot get the game to recognise the word "blue".

What a joke.

Discrimination? Wow. Grasping at straws. Not even people are accustomed to every accent in the world, and can't understand what everyone hears. The games have trouble when I speak in japanese at times b/c I tend to speak in a kumamoto accent >_>
Silly me, not silly discrimination. It'll be difficult for computer program to recognize all forms of a language especially when speech impediments may affect the person speaking and slang is not programmed into recognition.
So someone saying, "I dun it wron' man'! I'm 'a talk betta!" isn't necessarily going to be recognized since it wasn't programed to omit some sounds and still accept.

What's next? England saying that the game discriminates saying the "u" in Flavor, color and favorite? Flavour, colour, favourite.

i have a vauge colorado accent ( we replace Ts with Ds it affects other games, but not brain age in perticular) and my ds has some trouble picking up my accent. its just the software. it doesn't mean to be discriinating against people with difrent accents. its just hardware limitations.

as a scot, i can say 'srsly, wtf' at this. omg, it doesn't quite recognise your voice pattern?? oh noes, it was clearly targetted against you!
it are conspiracy!
light the flaming torches!



i think a better option would be to teach the DS a user's voice, rather like MS office's feature.

That particular training exercise was poorly programmed to begin with. I mean, I would constantly fail it if I was trying to pronounce the colours correctly but managed to be successful when I was shouting "ACK", "ELLO", "OO" and "ED". Try it, it's just ridiculous...

I don't know what kind of accent I have but I must be discriminated against too!

She does know that speaking in Brain Age (training, whatever) is not required but optional right?

i saw this program

to be fair it wasnt really about the discrimination issue. it was more a figure of speech (and a bad choice of words). It was more jsut about the general performance of the voice recognition software in recognising non 'standard' accents.

But to be fair, as a programmer i understand how they couldnt exactly spend 50 years getting support for every individual accent on the planet. the job would be impossible. Plus the manual does say to speak clearly and that it may have bproblems with strong accents.

Oh ps you can play the entire £17 game (what do you expect for that price..) without voice recognition anyway.

In all fairness i did think watchdog was a little harsh and showed their misunderstanding of the constraints of hardware and software, even repeatedly calling it a 'DS NINTENDO' ... yeah 50/50 chance of getting it right

however, i thing GP has (SLIGHTLY) focused in on the wrong issue here, it really wasnt a program about 'discrimination' in the strict sense of the word. That quote was one part of an entire 5 minute segment.

@ JC:

"England" hasn't complained about anything - one particular tv show host doesn't represent an entire nation.

After all, you didn't find Europeans crying "America labels Mass Effect as porn" after that erroneous, slanderous Fox news report.

So if I'm having a conversion with someone from Scotland and I said "I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I didn't understand", I'm being discriminatory?

Good god people...it didn't understand your accent. Deal. My phone sometimes has trouble with the voice recognition, and I'm from the Midwest. Supposedly, the main thing about the Midwest accent is that there isn't much of a discernable accent...we don't stress anything! Yet it still has trouble!

oh go to www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer

search for watchdog. Iplayer is a free service so you can watch the episode of watchdog in question (in fact all bbc tv for last 7 days)

can you link to it GP?

i think if you watch the whole thing you'll see my point (not that it was fair or correct, IMO it was way over dramatic) but it wasnt really about somebodys race, or calling nintendo racists

@C'tri
Dude, I almost started guffawing at your post there, as the voice in my head suddenly changed to an over-the-top Scottish accent ala Fat Bastard - "it are conspiracy!"

Silly question, but with regards to Mike Meyer's assumed accent for his roles as Fat Bastard and Shrek, how close did they sound to the true speech pattern from a native Scotsman? I'm a Yank, so I'm obviously a poor judge of such things, but I figure if anyone could tell it'd be you.

Oh jeez... this is the stupidest thing ever. Seriously, stop complaining about how the game is "racist" because you're accent isn't picked up by even the most advanced voice recognition software.

*awaits Fox News to come in a blow the story way way WAAAAAAAAAAAY out of proportion*

Once again it seems my fellow gamers have spoken and probably in far better words that I could have chosen.

With all the struggles the game industry has today with trying to mass market their products around the world, does anyone really think they are trying to discriminate against anyone? Does the software recognize all the dialects in the Chinese language? No, then they must also be discriminating against the Chinese too.

When will the press and media stop the reactionary press crap? Sorry, I didn't understand you, they must be discrimating against me :P

JMack

There's no "R" in yellow. Sorry. I have no issues with dialect, in fact, Pittsburgh (where I'm from) is known for it's own quirky tang. But I draw the line at adding letters.
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~

Some people get offended too easily.

This isn't discrimination. It's simply a game that's not redesigned for Britain.

^I meant "not redesigned for different regions of the U.K"

watchdog really didnt say or make out the game was racist in a serious way at all if you watch the show (www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer)

There is irony in this story getting blown out of proportion , when the anger is someone blowing something out of proportion.

was the seciton on the show completely accurate.. no

did i think it was a good perspective on the issue.. no i thought it was pretty over dramatic and sensationalised

did they call nintendo racists like alot of posters seem to be interpreting it as.. no they really didnt..

That quote above reallllly cant be taken in isolation.

Still the show section was a sham, and i can think of numerous complaints, but for valid reasons.

I was laughing myself silly when this went to air yesterday. This woman, mispronouncing "Yellow" as "Yeller" and then complaining it doesn't understand her.

Most people don't understand Mancunians at the best of times, let alone a computer.

The instructions say try to pronounce words clearly, and shes there shouting "Yeller" "Yeller"... hilarious.

They obviously had time to fill on this weeks show and just thought "oh that ones easy to do..."

infact taking the quote above in isolation and as representing the whole, is no better than taking the sex scene from mass effect and saying the whole game is sex.

The PC brigade is out in force on another mission of stupidity...

"Discrimination" is not the word for the voice recognition in Brain Age. "Shoddy" or "broken" are much better words. The only decent true way of getting voice recognition to work for this would be is they had a trainer on it, i.e. before you begin it asked you to say what colour they saw with the correct word and they saved that sound sample for comparison rather than some programmer or devloper doing it at design time.

Anyhow, this is nothing to do with accent if she is shouting "yellar"; that is dialect.

I hear ya on the Philly accent thing GP, but if anything it teaches people to pronunciate properly.

You guys are such characters! Seriously, what's with the massive overreaction?

I happened to see the show and the segment was presented as a bit of light relief at the end. No one was "screaming" discrimination, the word "racism" was never once hinted at - all concerned were very calm and lighthearted about the whole thing. Personally, I most enjoyed the bit where they got an impersonator in to see what celebrities would have most luck with the software (the Queen and Des Lynam, as it turns out).

Now there's people here talking about allegations of racism and conspiracy? Guys, guys, come on. We're talking about a simple, factual, and not all that serious complaint. You're allowed to back down once in a while.


Incidentally though, does this means it's now ok to condemn things without bothering to find out anything about them? Because, uh, I thought we didn't like that, what with the Mass Effect thing and all.

I have seen one post that mentions 'racism' and that in referral to another site. Where are these posts that are saying racism?

There should be a new rule like rule /34/.

If it exists, people WILL bitch about it.
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