BBC Program: Brainy DS Game Discriminates Against Scottish Accents

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 :).

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

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?

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.

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

"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.

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.

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 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.

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!

@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.

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

Some people get offended too easily.

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

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.

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.

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

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