Speechmatics’ Custom Dictionary helps live broadcasters never get names wrong in subtitles again

The easy-to-use interface allows customers to quickly add context specific words to Speechmatics’ dictionary simply via text Today, Speechmatics is announcing the launch of Custom Dictionary, a new feature for the company’s current speech-to-text transcription offering. Live broadcast subtitling has a recognized problem when it comes to names and place names. Custom Dictionary (CD) lets users add context specific words in real-time such as footballer names or breaking news locations, instantly increasing the accuracy.

Traditionally, transcription providers would have to train each specific model for a customer to include special words. However, setting up a new model has typically been very time-consuming, usually requiring an overnight rebuild. Custom Dictionary streamlines the entire process by putting the customer in control and allowing them to add new words in plain text to “teach” the model, regardless of use case or language context. CD enables users to define the context of a conversation in advance, and input those difficult terms into the dictionary, so that when they do come up they are transcribed without error. For example, sports subtitling is dramatically improved with prior input of player names, venues and club names. While developing CD, accuracy remained a top priority, as customers indicated this to be key to improving their value propositions. Speechmatics has successfully improved on its accuracy rates and already comprehensive dictionary by dynamically adapting to the context of individual use cases. When compared directly to Google’s Cloud Speech, and with both Speechmatics’ CD and Google’s API “hints” features enabled, Speechmatics produced a transcript that was more than 12% more accurate*.