Assessing the Performance of Automatic Speech Recognition Systems When Used by Native and Non-Native Speakers of Three Major Languages in Dictation Workflows

In this paper, we report on a two-part experiment aiming to assess and compare the performance of two types of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems on two different computational platforms when used to augment dictation workflows. The experiment was performed with a sample of speakers of three major languages and with different linguistic profiles: non-native English speakers; non-native French speakers; and native Spanish speakers. The main objective of this experiment is to examine ASR performance in translation dictation (TD) and medical dictation (MD) workflows without manual transcription vs. with transcription. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of a particular ASR approach in different computational platforms when used by various speakers of a given language, who may have different accents and levels of proficiency in that language, and who may have different levels of competence and experience dictating large volumes of text, and with ASR technology. Lastly, we enumerate several areas for future research.