Frank - below is an answer to your query, care of Laurie McArthur of the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre at the University of Toronto. I sent your request to her, and this is what she said (she is an expert in this area): Re: the voice rec inquiry. The two main commercial voice rec programs remain Dragon Naturally Speaking by Scansoft and IBM's Via Voice. Both programs have large dictionaries, and are capable of adding words that are not contained in the existing dictionary. Both products have a version of there software available in French, but it is a separate program and I believe may not have all the features of the latest versions of these programs in English. Typically we recommend a minimum of 128 MB of RAM. The specific product recommendations may lead him to believe that the software should run with 100 mb - but how well it will run is the true test. If installed on anything less the comuters processing slows incredibly. When the system resources are taxed, the net result is a significant delay in the recognition and processing of the text being spoken. Having to wait for the system to catch up interrupts the individuals' thought process. He would also only be able to use the dictation and navigation features available in the basic word processor that comes with the software since adding the processing demands of dictating into MS Word would likely crash his system. Specific product links are: http://www.scansoft.com/naturallyspeaking/international/ http://www-3.ibm.com/software/speech/desktop/lang-chart.html and http://www-3.ibm.com/software/speech/desktop/w10.html Laurie Frank Thomas wrote:

Hi, this is a question that is slightly off list.

Is there a good program for voice recognition & dictation ? That also runs well when you dictate social science texts with their large vocabulary ? How about speech recognition for French language texts ?

I am using WP 98 with 100 MB RAM. The amount of RAM can't be increased as this is a Dell notebook. And you don't get any more RAM modules 6 months after they stopped the production line of the model, I was told.

Thank you .

Frank

-- ---------------------------- Frank Thomas FTR Internet Research 321, boulevard de la Boissière 93110 Rosny-sous-Bois France tél. 0033.1.48.94.36.90

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