Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training has come under fire on BBC's Watchdog program for failing to recognise accents from the North. And you just thought it was 'grim up north'...
Deemed important enough to take up a five-minute slot on Monday night's show, Nintendo and its DS game, Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training, were under the spotlight of presenter Nicky Campbell.
First up was Manchester radio presenter Michelle Livesey who got the DS and game for Christmas, only to find it couldn't understand a word she was saying.
'Yeller' she kept mouthing into the mic, only to get it wrong time and time again. Other northern folk then appeared on camera and backed up the claims.
"Basically you have to say the different colours that flash up on the screen as quickly as possible," she said. "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."
Campbell went as far as saying that Brain Training "clearly discriminated against" certain accents, especially Northern and Scottish.
Nintendo didn't appear on the show but left a message saying it had been monitoring the voice recognition efficiency in its software since the game's launch in June 2006. And that its customer services department has received only a very small number of calls from people with accents who have been affected.
The firm also said it would like to apologise, and pointed out that Northerners should follow the advice given in the game manual. Page 47, in case you were wondering:
The ideal distance to be from the Nintendo DS system when speaking into the microphone is about 20-30 cm (8-12 inches).
Be careful, as the microphone is very sensitive, and shouting or blowing may hinder the voice recognition.
The environment should be quiet.
Pronounce each word as clearly as possible, and try to avoid using strong dialects or accents
South African: Bleck = Black. Bleck, Bleck, Bleck!!! Fackin hill men! Its taking the pess eht of me!!.
Im from scotland & i understand that a new sophistcated piece of software cannot understand strong accents such as my own or yorkshire, scouse etc. What short-minded people with no understanding of the work that goes into these projects have to understand, is that you cant expect something to please everybody. Thats impossible. Instead, play the game pretending your speaking to a foreigner who doesnt understand you (eg) Shouting the word louder, slower & clearer.
clearly watchdog had nothing important to report about, this is the most garbage i've heard in a long time. Maybe these retards who are unable to speak properly should grow a few brain cells.
clearly watchdog had nothing important to report about, this is the most garbage i've heard in a long time. Maybe these retards who are unable to speak properly should grow a few brain cells.
And what's to say your f**ked up way of talking is the correct way? Talking "properly" is something YOU can't do either because I seriously doubt you don't use some slang or have an accent that the DS can't pick up when you're pronouncing certain words.
Anyway Scottish people can understand you English boys even though your voices sound as though your balls have yet to drop, but English people can't understand Scots. Who is the one with fewer brain cells? bottomHOLE!
Anyway Scottish people can understand you English boys even though your voices sound as though your balls have yet to drop, but English people can't understand Scots. Who is the one with fewer brain cells? bottomHOLE!
And Scottish women sound like their ball's have dropped
I don't like the way this thread is turning, why the hell are people who don't talk with a 'proper accent' retards?! I'm from Lancashire and live in Manchester, so I have a pretty thick accent - I'm going to take this moment to apologise to anyone south of Birmingham and east of Somerset for my appaling accent - I'm sorry.
Anyway, I have the game, and most of my housemates can't get it to understand what we're saying. Luckily, we can just skip the talking stuff. But I do think that more effort should be put into making sure this software works with as many accents as possible. Not everyone speaks the Queen's English.
I didn't realise it was capable for a piece of software to discrimiate against any given individual, hmmm.
Anyway, having worked on a game with voice recognition I can tell for a fact that there is much more involved getting it to work than just the accent.
Age and sex are particularly difficult to detect accurately using the same recognition neural networks (in untrained voice recognition software) and claiming that this is discriminatory is particularly disturbing from a supposedly reputable BBC programme.
Then there are the technical limitations. The DS doesn't have vast amounts of RAM to sample recordings from it's small, relatively low quality microphone. I'd be suprised if it was recording any higher then 11khz. If you want to hear what that sounds like go and rip a CD track to 11khz mono then compare it to how the CD sounds. Particularly high or low sounds will be distorted and clipped, removing the sound from the file or altering it beyond recognition.
It's amazing something the size and power of a DS can do any sort of untrained voice recognition at all really.
I guess the only other alternative is to never bother trying any of this stuff if the whingers are just going to get on its back.
clearly watchdog had nothing important to report about, this is the most garbage i've heard in a long time. Maybe these retards who are unable to speak properly should grow a few brain cells.
And what's to say your f**ked up way of talking is the correct way? Talking "properly" is something YOU can't do either because I seriously doubt you don't use some slang or have an accent that the DS can't pick up when you're pronouncing certain words.
Anyway Scottish people can understand you English boys even though your voices sound as though your balls have yet to drop, but English people can't understand Scots. Who is the one with fewer brain cells? bottomHOLE!
Here we go, the sweatys getting all defensive, as tested on the program Scottish and English (Northern, midlands, southern etc) have been known to all encounter problems. The English can't help it if the Scots sound like drunken retards! Stop being so bitter and grow up. I agree totally, hasn't watchdog got more important things to investigate like pensioners getting ripped off etc?
I dont really think this is news worthy, particularly for watchdog. My accent is as northern as it gets, ive never had any problem playing Brain training. Christ!!, all you have to do is pronounce a few colours properly.
clearly watchdog had nothing important to report about, this is the most garbage i've heard in a long time. Maybe these retards who are unable to speak properly should grow a few brain cells.
And what's to say your f**ked up way of talking is the correct way? Talking "properly" is something YOU can't do either because I seriously doubt you don't use some slang or have an accent that the DS can't pick up when you're pronouncing certain words.
Anyway Scottish people can understand you English boys even though your voices sound as though your balls have yet to drop, but English people can't understand Scots. Who is the one with fewer brain cells? bottomHOLE!
Quite the tard aren't you to launch attacks on entire groups because of one person which makes you just as brainless as he/she/it is, to most people in the world a strong Scottish accent can sound like gibberish or babbling while you can understand the English because quite frankly their accents sound more like what you would read in a dictionary.
Now I suggest you grow up instead of bringing your ego into the forum and trying to turn this into some unnecessary Scots vs English when none of the groups were mentioned in the post you responded to or needed bringing up.
I've never found an English person who couldn't understand me, nor have I ever met one I couldn't understand.
Bear in mind that each country also has plenty of local dialects, each one different from the rest. So it wouldn't surprise me if it couldn't pick out Glesskae slang, while it might not have an issue with a Perthshire drawl. Likewise I'd expect some middle-class "proper" BBC-English accent to be understood a lot better than some chav Geordie.
You simply can't please everybody all of the time.
I can't play Rock/Paper/Scissors on the DS because it doesn't like one of the words (I forget which), but there are like 8 other tests you can do there. Jeez. I bet it's the same for strong regional accents anywhere.
It's like people searching for ANYTHING to complain about. I know I whinge plenty, but at least I don't seek it out.
Surely the fact that Brain Training insists on proper pronounciation is a good thing? Not only does it improve memory, it also makes people more intelligible. Play Brain Training & say goodbye to pure mountain gibberish.
Personally, I believe language, by definition(a way to communicate with others) can't be subjective, or it fails. If I say one word, and you think of another, what's the point? If every word doesn't have a fixed meaning it's no longer a way to communicate it's just some sounds that can be interpreted how ever you choose. So if that's true, we have to look at what is a word. The difference between the word "dad" and "dead" is essentially the pronunciation, therefore there is theoretically a correct way to pronounce every word, and as there is to spell it, and draw a certain meaning from it. Is Brain training using the "correct" pronunciation? I can't say, but I do believe there is only one correct accent. Ideally, I would say it is the average American one. Not because I'm American, but because everyone can understand it(like I said, "average" accent, not a strong Louisianian accent, for example). Doesn't mean it really is the correct one, especially if it's just because it's the lowest common denominator.
Another thing that needs to be taken into account is the technological limitations posed, which would make this impossible. Sort of like why there tend to be just one race used for a lot of NPC "extras" in games. Not because the developers are racist, but because it means adding more models(although with the next gen consoles, that's not really a problem anymore). There will always be something...
I would also like to point out that the game is discriminative towards all English speakers, as it prefers ones who speak Engrish. Maybe it has been fixed by now but in the early editions of the first one, you were actually required to yell "brue" into the mic.
Im Scottish and I had the same problems with this game.
But...
It makes it a laugh as you chuck your "best hair lair thair" voice on and yell bloo Backk Yelloow etc, makes it more entertaining for everyone around you to sound like a f***y !!!
Haha I remember my brother had the exact same problem saying yellow (YELLA, YELLA!), we're from a part of N.Ireland where it can be bloody hard to understand us. Still with games like that I know I have to put on like a british accent to get it to work. I had the same problem with Rainbow Six 3, they never did a thing I asked until I started speaking like a posh git.
So did I. How very dull it was too. 'the DS Nintendo'
Yes, all credibility of that piece of Journalism was thrown out the window when the DS was referred to as the DS Nintendo on about four or five occasions.
Yeah cheers for banning me CVG can't you take criticism. I remember when CVG was the U.K.s number one games magazine and actually reported the indiscriminant truth.
Here's my post again minus profanities.
Brain Training discriminates against Northerners, says Watch
Yet another sensationalist headline from CVG that misses the point completely. In the piece Watchdog tested the voice recognition on both Northerners and Southerners concluding that the problem is universal. Right this time instead of banning me why don't you defend your article.
There you go, how hard was that to retype without the profanities? Not very, I would imagine.
And does your argument suffer because you haven't put 'f*ck*ng' in every couple of words? No - if anything, people are more likely to read it.
Anyway, I think CVG are pretty good at taking criticism. Even though it's the only online magazine I read, I'm constantly criticising the sub - key stage 3 spelling!
Having watched your recent programme regarding the DS Nintendo product i'd like to make you aware of another similar problem.
My problem is in regards to another product Nintendo make, called the Wii Nintendo. There is a feature in the product where you can purchase old games, refered to as Virtual Console games. I recently purchased a game called Super Mario Bros, you may have heard of it from the NES Nintendo days.
The specific problem i am having with this game is similar to the one the radio presenter was experiencing so i thought i should bring your attention to it. There is one section of this game where you have to jump on a brown creature, i believe it is called a gummo. Anyway everytime i attempt to jump on this creature Mario, the lead character, just misses and either falls down a hole or gets hit by something else. Now as a professional athlete with many years of jumping behind me its obvious to me this game is clearly broken.
I believe the reason that the Nintendo cannot understand a strong northern accent is very obvious, the Japanese are simply not accustomed to hearing it! As a part time historian I recently watched "The Bridge over the River Kwai" and the majority of the accents were aristocratic English voices eg. Alec Guinness, they've probably still got some POW's captured in the war working for them and have trained the voices based on these RAF officers..... Had anyone thought of that?????????
I'm sorry.... but if you say yellar... it's not saying the word properly is it...
I just want to start a flame war... clearly.
OK, they should have programmed in alternative pronounciations but surely this is not worthy of dragging onto Watchdog??
I can virtually guarantee that pretty much any person who claims that they say things 'properly' will say at least a dozen words incorrectly. Probably more.
I consider myself to have a relatively subtle accent - I have lived in Surrey for most of my life, with the exception of 4 years in Preston for uni.
But every time I take he p:ss out of my girlfriend (from Leeds) for certain pronounciations of words she says, she will just as quickly give me stick about words I consider to be correctly pronounced when in actuality, have been 'southern-ised'.
This was always going to be a dodgy topic. Mind you it's a nice break from 'my xbox 360 is better than your ps3' and 'at least my 360/ps3 doesn't give me tennis elbow'!
My feeling is tha gamers have become accepting of poorly implemented and buggy games - but Brain Training is not aimed at gamers, they are targeting non-gamers; people used to returning items if they are faulty. If this wasn't a game, if it was something other than a aame then I suspect the manufacturers would have issued a product recall.
On a side note, I find the handwriting recognition on Brain Training to be poorly implemented.
clearly watchdog had nothing important to report about, this is the most garbage i've heard in a long time. Maybe these retards who are unable to speak properly should grow a few brain cells.
And what's to say your f**ked up way of talking is the correct way? Talking "properly" is something YOU can't do either because I seriously doubt you don't use some slang or have an accent that the DS can't pick up when you're pronouncing certain words.
Anyway Scottish people can understand you English boys even though your voices sound as though your balls have yet to drop, but English people can't understand Scots. Who is the one with fewer brain cells? bottomHOLE!
Quite the tard aren't you to launch attacks on entire groups because of one person which makes you just as brainless as he/she/it is, to most people in the world a strong Scottish accent can sound like gibberish or babbling while you can understand the English because quite frankly their accents sound more like what you would read in a dictionary.
Now I suggest you grow up instead of bringing your ego into the forum and trying to turn this into some unnecessary Scots vs English when none of the groups were mentioned in the post you responded to or needed bringing up.
Firstly this has nothing to do with ego. Look up the meaning of the world before you use it.
Secondly HE/SHE was the one who started the insults so clearly he/she was going to get some back!
And Scottish people did need to be brought up here because encase it has escaped you that is what this whole article is about.
I brought up English people because he was taking a dig at how Scottish people spoke and called them "retards".
Ignoring for a moment how people pronounce words, wouldn't it be better if the "DS Nintendo" asked you to say the word once, or twice, or a few more times to learn how you pronounce a word? It could then use that to recognise what you were saying.
Just for the record, I speak flawlessly and the DS still doesn't always know what I'm on about
Ignoring for a moment how people pronounce words, wouldn't it be better if the "DS Nintendo" asked you to say the word once, or twice, or a few more times to learn how you pronounce a word? It could then use that to recognise what you were saying.
Just for the record, I speak flawlessly and the DS still doesn't always know what I'm on about
Yeah cheers for banning me CVG can't you take criticism. I remember when CVG was the U.K.s number one games magazine and actually reported the indiscriminant truth.
Here's my post again minus profanities.
Brain Training discriminates against Northerners, says Watch
Yet another sensationalist headline from CVG that misses the point completely. In the piece Watchdog tested the voice recognition on both Northerners and Southerners concluding that the problem is universal. Right this time instead of banning me why don't you defend your article.
There you go, how hard was that to retype without the profanities? Not very, I would imagine.
And does your argument suffer because you haven't put 'f*ck*ng' in every couple of words? No - if anything, people are more likely to read it.
Anyway, I think CVG are pretty good at taking criticism. Even though it's the only online magazine I read, I'm constantly criticising the sub - key stage 3 spelling!
Swearing helps to bring more emotion into things. For example: "I hate this article" and "I hate this f**king article!"
i just KNEW this DS Nintendo would be trouble what with its racist way of forcing people to pronounce things proper good english like, its almost as bad as the PlayStation SonyBox with its evil child killer simulator ManBully, I say ban everything and if you don't agree your just a Yeller Belly liberal
TO EVERYONE COMMENTING ON THIS THREAD. CVG HAVE DONE YET ANOTHER CRAPTASTIC RETARDED PIECE OF REPORTING. HERE IS THE VIDEO MENTION IN THIS ARTICLE http://youtube.com/watch?v=sOviCqq2o24 AS YOU CAN SEE IT'S NOT JUST SCOTTISH PEOPLE WHO IT CAN'T UNDERSTAND! LOOKS LIKE NONE OF US CAN TALK RIGHT.
TO EVERYONE COMMENTING ON THIS THREAD. CVG HAVE DONE YET ANOTHER CRAPTASTIC RETARDED PIECE OF REPORTING. HERE IS THE VIDEO MENTION IN THIS ARTICLE http://youtube.com/watch?v=sOviCqq2o24 AS YOU CAN SEE IT'S NOT JUST SCOTTISH PEOPLE WHO IT CAN'T UNDERSTAND! LOOKS LIKE NONE OF US CAN TALK RIGHT.
IN FUTURE HOW ABOUT REPORTING THE FULL STORY CVG?
Exactly what I was trying to say. The full story probably wouldn't cause as much argument though.
TO EVERYONE COMMENTING ON THIS THREAD. CVG HAVE DONE YET ANOTHER CRAPTASTIC RETARDED PIECE OF REPORTING. HERE IS THE VIDEO MENTION IN THIS ARTICLE http://youtube.com/watch?v=sOviCqq2o24 AS YOU CAN SEE IT'S NOT JUST SCOTTISH PEOPLE WHO IT CAN'T UNDERSTAND! LOOKS LIKE NONE OF US CAN TALK RIGHT.
IN FUTURE HOW ABOUT REPORTING THE FULL STORY CVG?
Exactly what I was trying to say. The full story probably wouldn't cause as much argument though.
Yeah they no doubt only told part of the story to cause all this arguing! Imagine them laughing in their offices right now
Makes you wonder how many more of there articles are incomplete.
Yeah cheers for banning me CVG can't you take criticism. I remember when CVG was the U.K.s number one games magazine and actually reported the indiscriminant truth.
Here's my post again minus profanities.
Brain Training discriminates against Northerners, says Watch
Yet another sensationalist headline from CVG that misses the point completely. In the piece Watchdog tested the voice recognition on both Northerners and Southerners concluding that the problem is universal. Right this time instead of banning me why don't you defend your article.
There you go, how hard was that to retype without the profanities? Not very, I would imagine.
And does your argument suffer because you haven't put 'f*ck*ng' in every couple of words? No - if anything, people are more likely to read it.
Anyway, I think CVG are pretty good at taking criticism. Even though it's the only online magazine I read, I'm constantly criticising the sub - key stage 3 spelling!
Actually my post was exactly the same when I used profantities. It just had get your f**king facts right at the end. Does that really deserve a banning? If so then it doesn't look like I'm the only one on this board who should be banned.
Yeah cheers for banning me CVG can't you take criticism. I remember when CVG was the U.K.s number one games magazine and actually reported the indiscriminant truth.
Here's my post again minus profanities.
Brain Training discriminates against Northerners, says Watch
Yet another sensationalist headline from CVG that misses the point completely. In the piece Watchdog tested the voice recognition on both Northerners and Southerners concluding that the problem is universal. Right this time instead of banning me why don't you defend your article.
There you go, how hard was that to retype without the profanities? Not very, I would imagine.
And does your argument suffer because you haven't put 'f*ck*ng' in every couple of words? No - if anything, people are more likely to read it.
Anyway, I think CVG are pretty good at taking criticism. Even though it's the only online magazine I read, I'm constantly criticising the sub - key stage 3 spelling!
Actually my post was exactly the same when I used profantities. It just had get your f**king facts right at the end. Does that really deserve a banning? If so then it doesn't look like I'm the only one on this board who should be banned.
My ears are burning...
That doesn't deserve a banning...but maybe you knew to much. Maybe they thought you would cause an end to the arguement.
Ignoring for a moment how people pronounce words, wouldn't it be better if the "DS Nintendo" asked you to say the word once, or twice, or a few more times to learn how you pronounce a word? It could then use that to recognise what you were saying.
Where would it keep this information keeping in mind that the DS only has 4Mb RAM?
Ignoring for a moment how people pronounce words, wouldn't it be better if the "DS Nintendo" asked you to say the word once, or twice, or a few more times to learn how you pronounce a word? It could then use that to recognise what you were saying.
Where would it keep this information keeping in mind that the DS only has 4Mb RAM?
Nintendogs stores voice clips onto the game so I'm sure brain training can do it too.
Ignoring for a moment how people pronounce words, wouldn't it be better if the "DS Nintendo" asked you to say the word once, or twice, or a few more times to learn how you pronounce a word? It could then use that to recognise what you were saying.
Where would it keep this information keeping in mind that the DS only has 4Mb RAM?
Unless I'm mistaken, the game cartridges have memory, and you can add memory using a card slot -- I'm no DS expert though!
It shouldn't present massive problems, although I'm sure Nintendo thought of this long before I did.
Pathetic. Brain Training is such a clever bit of kit why do people have to ruin it. Nintendo did an awesome job. I've had a couple of problems myself but i expect that. Just learn how it works best and enjoy it. Jesus!
clearly watchdog had nothing important to report about, this is the most garbage i've heard in a long time. Maybe these retards who are unable to speak properly should grow a few brain cells.
I'm from Glasgow and I really took offense from that you f**king snooker cue, it's not my fault that's the way I speak, I could say you've got a funny accent and don't speak right, it's not like I can change it automatically and it's doesn't mean I'm stupid.
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