madcomments

English is clearly a second language for Spinvox

Posted in Media, Digital, Nikki Preston, Latest reporters' blogs November 26th, 2007 by Nikki Preston

Spinvox, the free service that translates voice messages into texts, has ramped up its marketing and communications team in the move to expand globally from next year, which I think is both brave and stupid as the service can’t even seem to translate its mother tongue.

Not only with the planned expansion - James Grogg, who joined Spinvox as its marketing director from MTV in July, has a big task ahead of him as spinvoxers like me will tell him that word of mouth marketing is probably killing the brand. The only time I mention the service is to say how much trouble I have had understanding a particular message.

As someone who has used Spinvox for the past 18 months and has a love/hate relationship with it – I do have to wonder if the rest of the world is ready for it…with its 50 per cent accuracy rate of translating the exact message.

Spinvox is not for the faint hearted as it takes a lot of sleuthing to figure out even the bare bones of the message and is even harder to work out how to unsubscribe from its shackles – hence why I still use the service, despite my gripes.

The biggest problem with Spinvox is its accuracy because if it actually got a job translating prose as a PA, it would be sacked within the first assignment for failing to listen properly or even make sense of the message it was asked to relay.

Although I have certainly honed my detective skills, as with Spinvox there is no such thing as a simple message.