Speech-to-Text Technology for Translators: A Q&A with Dr. Julian Zapata

Session summary by Neha Bhavsar

Speech-to-text technology has quietly become one of the most practical tools in a translator's kit. In this Q&A session, guest lecturer Dr. Julian Zapata answered questions from Modlingua's summer interns on how dictation and voice recognition fit into professional translation work.

Dr. Zapata describes dictation translation as a hybrid between translation and interpretation - and a useful exercise for anyone training to become an interpreter. His core advice is to make dictation a regular habit: start with a simple, easy text, then raise the difficulty gradually. Practice, he stresses, is the key to perfection. Tools worth trying include Google's voice recognition and a simple voice recorder, alongside the research literature - his own thesis, scientific articles and specialist blogs.

On the reliability of voice recognition software, given how much accents vary, he pointed to an experiment he ran with Indian-accented English speakers that produced good results. As the technology improves, recognition for many languages is becoming genuinely dependable - but, in his words, the success of the software comes from the user's ability to dictate, and from enforced practice to become skilled and get better results.

The takeaway for language professionals: speech-to-text will not replace skill, but translators who build dictation into their daily routine work faster and sharpen the same reflexes that interpreting demands.