Voice-Recognition Software Gives Tingly Hands a Break
The world is divided between folk who have had computer-related repetitive strain injury -- known as RSI and usually afflicting hands and wrists -- caused by too much typing or mouse usage, and those folk who think they're a bunch of whingers. I know this because I've been a member of both groups.
It attacks people in different ways, at different times and with varying degrees of intensity. Mine, thankfully, has been manageable, with a daily jog to improve circulation, some hand and wrist exercises and regular breaks from the computer. I've had to say goodbye to tennis, weight-lifting and excessive piano-playing. I was never very good at any of those anyway. But I have friends with RSI who have disappeared into a pit of worry that they'll never be productive again, or even those for whom typing and using a mouse -- or anything that puts demands on the fingers and wrists -- is a thing of the past. They have my complete sympathy.
On the other side of the fence sit those who use computers constantly and have never felt a tingle. Or others who point to the fact that pre-PC typists may have suffered in silence, their pain dismissed as minor, or those in other, less-written-about industries such as meat packing, who suffer similar RSIs that go unnoticed and uncompensated. I'll leave it to others to explore all that. I'm here to offer some hope and advice to PC users who may have had some brush with RSI.
Take the case of Kate Withey, a 20-year veteran of the computer industry, who works on user interface and graphic design in the San Francisco Bay area of the U.S. As a consultant, she would generally work out of a cafe, using an Apple PowerBook. Her work mostly involved touching up photos and images in Adobe PhotoShop using a mouse, what she calls "a lot of one-pixel-at-a-time sort of graphics." About five years ago she noticed the first tinglings of tendonitis. Things got steadily worse, until even carrying groceries or turning a page hurt. "My body made it very clear that I had to deal with this problem and change the way I work and live," she recalls. It was then that a vocational-rehab counselor recommended a voice-recognition program called Dragon NaturallySpeaking from U.S.-based ScanSoft.
NaturallySpeaking (
www.scansoft.com/naturallyspeaking), a program that allows you to interact with your computer via speech, converting what you say to commands or text, has made great strides since I played around with it a few years back. Spend half an hour going through the basic exercises -- more to familiarize the computer with your voice than for you to familiarize yourself with the software -- and you're ready to roll. Load the software, open a document in Microsoft Word, or the built-in NaturallySpeaking word-processing program, and start talking at moderate pace. If you like, you can hand over punctuation to the software, which will judge from your silences where to insert full stops. Or, just tell it where you want commas, exclamation marks or new paragraphs.
Indeed, whether this kind of thing works depends on how quickly one can adapt to it. Scansoft has definitely done great things in this department. Not only does the software make few errors in interpreting what you say, it also makes issuing commands -- moving the cursor around, opening and closing a file -- very easy, too.
Downsides? The program takes up a lot of memory and processing power. Unless you've got a recent machine, you might want to think hard before installing it. And don't expect it to be super fast even on an up-to-date machine; there's an inevitable time lag in interpreting what you say and converting it to text. There are some annoying quirks in the software, too: Sometimes I just could not get the program to recognize that I was talking; at other times it would just interpret what I was saying as gibberish, however clearly I spoke and however carefully I positioned the microphone. Given that I was trying to show off to a friend my new gadget, it was a tad embarrassing, I'll admit. Another gripe: You have to buy the Professional Edition ($700, against $200 for the Preferred Edition) to be able to prepare batches of commands called macros -- a feature Kate found useful for such tasks as designing graphic icons.
"I set up macros to do many of the things I used to do with command key shortcuts with my left hand: from simple things like switching between tools and showing palettes to a complicated sequence I use repeatedly when designing icons," she says. "Basically, it means I save my wrists for the parts I really need to use them for, and do as much of the overhead stuff as I can with voice."
Which leads me to my last bit of advice: Be realistic about how much you are going to use a program like this. NaturallySpeaking got me through a difficult patch of RSI a couple of months ago, but I'm back to typing again now. It's a great fallback if you're feeling too much of the tinglies, and if you're writing boring reports and letters that don't require a lot of forethought, it's perfect. But unless you're in serious pain, or find that dictating actually suits the way your brain works, programs like this are best deployed sparingly to suit the circumstances. Some tasks lend themselves to voice, others don't. Voice recognition is not a miracle, but it may give your precious hands a break they deserve.
让语音识别软件解放你的手
世界上有两种人：一种人患有与电脑有关的肢体重复性劳损(repetitive strain injury, 简称RSI)，他们的手指和腕关节经常感到疼痛，这主要是频繁地打字和使用鼠标引起的；另一种人则毫无感觉，对此根本不以为然。我了解这两种人，因为我有切身体会。
RSI以不同的方式、在不同的时间袭击人，侵袭程度也千差万别。令人欣慰的是，对我而言，RSI还是可以控制的。我每天进行慢跑，改善血液循环，还进行手臂和手腕练习，并定时休息，远离电脑。我不得不对网球、举重以及过频的钢琴课说再见。不过，我从来就没精通这些技艺。但是，我有些患了RSI的朋友，他们忧心忡忡，担心自己再也不能像过去那么能干了。更有甚者，对他们来说，敲击键盘或使用鼠标，或任何需要手指和手腕运动的动作，都成了历史。这些人最令我同情。
另一方面，有些人经常使用电脑，但从未感到一点疼痛。还有些人指出，在电脑诞生之前，打字员们也许一直默默地忍受著，她们的痛苦被认为是微不足道的。还有那些在不太需要书写的行业里（如肉类包装行业）工作的人们，他们也经受著类似RSI的痛苦，但没有人予以关注，他们也没有得到补偿。我把这些问题留给他人来探讨。在这里，我将向那些被RSI困扰的电脑用户提供一些建议。
以凯特?威西(Kate Withey)为例，她是电脑业的资深人士，干了二十年，目前在美国旧金山湾从事电脑用户界面和图形设计工作。作为一名顾问，威西经常在咖啡馆里用笔记本电脑Apple PowerBook工作，通过鼠标操纵Adobe PhotoShop程序来润色照片和图像。她把这种工作称为"一笔一划的图形处理"。大约在五年前，她感受到肌腱炎的首次轻微侵袭。接著，情况逐步恶化，以至于拎东西或翻书都让她感到疼痛。威西回忆说："我的身体发出明确信号：我必须处理这个问题，改变我的工作和生活方式。"当时，一位职业康复顾问向威西推荐了一种名为Dragon NaturallySpeaking的语音识别软件。该软件是由美国公司ScanSoft生产的。
NaturallySpeaking软件能让你通过讲话与电脑交流，它能把你说的话转换为指令或文本文件。我几年前曾玩过这个软件，时至今日，它又有了非凡的进步。花半个小时进行基本的练习，其实更多是为了让电脑熟悉你的声音，而非让你熟悉这个软件，随后你就可以操作了。先安装上软件，再打开Microsoft Word，或电脑里内置的NaturallySpeaking文字处理软件，你就可以以中等语速说话了。如果你愿意，你还可以让软件来处理标点符号，电脑可以从你的停顿来判断在哪里添加句号。你也可以告诉电脑在哪里加上逗号、感叹号或另起一段。 实际上，这个软件能否起作用取决于它的适应性有多快。Scansoft无疑在这方面做得很出色。该软件不仅在转换言辞上很少出错，而且还可轻松地执行指令，如移动光标、打开和关闭文件等。
缺点？它占用大量内存和处理能力。除非你的电脑比较新，否则你在安装时恐怕踌躇不已。即使在最新型的电脑上，你也别指望这个软件的运行速度很快，它在把你的话语转换成文本文件时不可避免地存在时间滞后。它还有一些令人烦恼的毛病：有时它就是无法判定我在说话；有时它把我说的话当成胡言乱语，无论我表述得多么清楚，在放置麦克风时有多么小心翼翼。我曾向朋友们炫耀这个新奇的机件，而上述现象自然让我无比尴尬。还有一点：你必须购买该软件的专业版(售价700美元，而非200美元的推荐版)，才能启用被称为宏的大批指令。威西发现宏在完成图形设计方面很有用。你可以看看她在
http://www.sfo.com/~withey/portfolio/nearspace/tiny.htm上的微型插图。
威西说："我利用宏来处理很多事，而过去我都是用左手按快捷键来完成这些工作的：从简单的功能切换到再三重复图形设计所需的复杂的程序。这意味著我省了力气，在必要时才挪动手腕，还尽可能地把操作性的工作通过语言来完成。"
我最后的一点建议是：对这样一个语音处理软件的期望要现实一些。几个月前，NaturallySpeaking软件帮我度过了RSI带来的艰难时光，但我现在又开始打字了。如果你感到疼痛难忍，或者你在撰写无须多少思考的乏味的报告和信件，这个软件简直太可靠，太完美了。但是，除非你痛得厉害，或认为口头叙述的确与大脑的思维方式吻合，否则最好少用此类软件。有些工作适合采用语音软件，而另一些并不适合。语音识别软件不是灵丹妙药，但它可以让你宝贵的双手得到应有的休息。
