Author Topic: Voice-over Artist Reading OWON Marketing Chinglish (Read 18073 times)

EEVblog · « **on:** October 30, 2015, 08:55:45 am »

Funny!

crispy_tofu · « **Reply #1 on:** October 30, 2015, 09:31:31 am »

Wait, what!? Mega-amp?

SteveLy · « **Reply #2 on:** October 30, 2015, 09:37:02 am »

Quote from: EEVblog on October 30, 2015, 08:55:45 am

Funny!

Someone · « **Reply #3 on:** October 30, 2015, 09:49:38 am »

Isnt that a synthesised voice? There is very little intonation and some quantising of pitch.

...edit...
Yes, it seems most of the current packages will parse some SI unit symbols but get the prefixes wrong.

crispy_tofu · « **Reply #4 on:** October 30, 2015, 09:53:59 am »

Quote from: Someone on October 30, 2015, 09:49:38 am

Isnt that a synthesised voice? There is very little intonation and some quantising of pitch.

I would think that any person natively speaking English would burst into laughter when reading that

tec5c · « **Reply #5 on:** October 30, 2015, 09:54:42 am »

Quote from: blueskull on October 30, 2015, 09:43:24 am

...even I can't get it completely understood.

In all honesty, the above quote is worse than anything in that video.

tec5c · « **Reply #6 on:** October 30, 2015, 10:05:34 am »

..even I don't completely understand it.

I was merely referring to the fact the video is not even bad. Compared to a native English speaker trying to speak Mandarin

EEVblog · « **Reply #7 on:** October 30, 2015, 10:07:22 am »

Quote from: Someone on October 30, 2015, 09:49:38 am

Isnt that a synthesised voice?

Sounds very unsynthesised to me? Yes the intonation and pace is sometimes off, but lots of good fluid bits too.

GNU_Ninja · « **Reply #8 on:** October 30, 2015, 10:09:53 am »

It's even funnier if you enable the YouTube subtitles on that video

tec5c · « **Reply #9 on:** October 30, 2015, 10:11:24 am »

Quote from: blueskull on October 30, 2015, 10:09:24 am

let along Chinese is NOT a language, it is a set of languages...

Hence why I said Mandarin.

crispy_tofu · « **Reply #10 on:** October 30, 2015, 10:12:07 am »

Quote from: GNU_Ninja on October 30, 2015, 10:09:53 am

It's even funnier if you enable the YouTube subtitles on that video

OWON has ballistics in their scopes?!

coppice · « **Reply #11 on:** October 30, 2015, 10:12:33 am »

Quote from: EEVblog on October 30, 2015, 10:07:22 am

Quote from: Someone on October 30, 2015, 09:49:38 am
Isnt that a synthesised voice?

Sounds very unsynthesised to me? Yes the intonation and pace is sometimes off, but lots of good fluid bits too.

I agree that it sounds too good for a synthetic voice. Some voice over artists are absolutely amazing to work with. They can read the deepest of technical works, or the most idiotic garbage, and on the first pass make it sound like they are an actual expert in the field.

coppice · « **Reply #12 on:** October 30, 2015, 10:14:25 am »

Quote from: tec5c on October 30, 2015, 10:11:24 am

Quote from: blueskull on October 30, 2015, 10:09:24 am
let along Chinese is NOT a language, it is a set of languages...

Hence why I said Mandarin.

People in the PRC and Taiwan would both say they speak Mandarin. However, their technical terminology, and especially terms which came into being after 1949, generally has little in common.

Muttley Snickers · « **Reply #13 on:** October 30, 2015, 10:19:32 am »

A bit too power hungry for my liking, "thirteen thousand two hundred mega amp battery works XDS series into three hours".

I might need a bit bigger trailer just for the battery transport.

tec5c · « **Reply #14 on:** October 30, 2015, 10:22:49 am »

Quote from: wilfred on October 30, 2015, 10:14:38 am

Why?
OK "Even I can't understand it correctly" would be better but for a non-native English speaker it was not really worthy of criticism.

Right, and the worse thing in the video is the voice over actor saying "mega amp..." which has nothing to do with the language barrier. In this sense, nothing in the video is worth criticising.

Someone · « **Reply #15 on:** October 30, 2015, 11:12:42 am »

Quote from: EEVblog on October 30, 2015, 10:07:22 am

Quote from: Someone on October 30, 2015, 09:49:38 am
Isnt that a synthesised voice?

Sounds very unsynthesised to me? Yes the intonation and pace is sometimes off, but lots of good fluid bits too.

Having recreated the same handling of the units (that a human is unlikely to get wrong in that way particularly re: GS/s) I'm very sure its synthesised, the technology has come a long way in the past 10 years but it still has another decade or so before it will fool those of us with good ears.

fivefish · « **Reply #16 on:** October 30, 2015, 12:09:25 pm »

Quote

But I am very surprised at the fact that voice actors, at least this one, are willing to say whatever "scripts" without thinking twice.

Probably hired him from fiverr.

SteveLy · « **Reply #17 on:** October 30, 2015, 12:15:22 pm »

OWON. OWONTWON. ULWONTWON2.

tooki · « **Reply #18 on:** October 30, 2015, 05:09:40 pm »

Quote from: Someone on October 30, 2015, 11:12:42 am

Quote from: EEVblog on October 30, 2015, 10:07:22 am
Quote from: Someone on October 30, 2015, 09:49:38 am
Isnt that a synthesised voice?

Sounds very unsynthesised to me? Yes the intonation and pace is sometimes off, but lots of good fluid bits too.
Having recreated the same handling of the units (that a human is unlikely to get wrong in that way particularly re: GS/s) I'm very sure its synthesised, the technology has come a long way in the past 10 years but it still has another decade or so before it will fool those of us with good ears.

I have to concur. If anything, the best TTS from 10 years ago (AT&T's) was already this good. Most likely, they actually used the Web based demo to create the soundtrack.

No voice actor would have left out articles (a, the, etc) they know belong there. Definitely synthesized.

bitseeker · « **Reply #19 on:** October 31, 2015, 02:09:41 am »

Sounds like a real voice actor to me. Although TTS systems sound pretty good, they still have glitches that are noticeable. Relative to the captioning rendered in the video, the voice actor made some corrections, especially when words were misspelled.

What surprises me is that they didn't request or accept corrections from the voice actor. He may not have known technical terms, but he certainly could have fixed basic grammar and awkward phrasing.

Anyway, it was fun hearing someone actually read it. At first it seemed OK because the pronunciation and intonation were within expectations. As it went on, and especially when reading along, it made me wonder how difficult it must have been to perform such a script.

OldSchoolTechCorner · « **Reply #20 on:** October 31, 2015, 02:31:21 am »

It does sound like a synthetic voice, it has that distinct sound characteristic that quite noticeable throughout the whole video. It was pretty funny the mistakes to.

SL4P · « **Reply #21 on:** October 31, 2015, 03:20:48 am »

Quote from: tec5c on October 30, 2015, 10:22:49 am

Quote from: wilfred on October 30, 2015, 10:14:38 am
Why?
OK "Even I can't understand it correctly" would be better but for a non-native English speaker it was not really worthy of criticism.
Right, and the worse thing in the video is the voice over actor saying "mega amp..." which has nothing to do with the language barrier. In this sense, nothing in the video is worth criticising.

... and the worse thing in the video...
I dunno, but I reckon it could have been a worse thing, or the worst thing...
(worse is relative, worst is absolute - but hey, I'm only a povo speaker in a glass house.)

miguelvp · « **Reply #22 on:** October 31, 2015, 03:24:40 am »

I don't think it was synthesized but maybe post processed to make it fit with the video but yeah something is odd about the voice.

One thing the video denotes is the importance of using a voice actor that at least is familiar with the terminology, One Ge S instead of One Giga Samples makes it confusing as well as the milli to Mega and other things.

I think even copywriters usually are field specific as well. Tek, Keysight, etc probably use at least trained sales people or even engineers to do their videos or at least have them involved so they can catch things like that.

SL4P · « **Reply #23 on:** October 31, 2015, 03:57:09 am »

All said, the video production values were quite good, and simply re-voicing the clip would help sell a bucket load more scopes in English speaking markets.

China sales 400K units... Non China sales 20K units... who cares.

bitseeker · « **Reply #24 on:** October 31, 2015, 04:25:34 am »

Quote from: miguelvp on October 31, 2015, 03:24:40 am

I don't think it was synthesized but maybe post processed to make it fit with the video but yeah something is odd about the voice.

The voice was definitely processed, but not an unusual thing these days. At least it wasn't a pitch-corrected nightmare.

ez24 · « **Reply #25 on:** October 31, 2015, 05:04:40 am »

Quote from: blueskull on October 30, 2015, 11:28:51 am

It sounds very, very real to me. If TTS can be that good, voice actors are getting into some serious troubles.

But I am very surprised at the fact that voice actors, at least this one, are willing to say whatever "scripts" without thinking twice.

The voice actor does not have experience with electronics. He just read what they gave him, and him is likely to be an English teacher in China. Overall I thought it was a good video to be from China.

SO are we going to buy one now? Lots of free publicity.

bitseeker · « **Reply #26 on:** October 31, 2015, 05:35:41 am »

Quote from: ez24 on October 31, 2015, 05:04:40 am

SO are we going to buy one now? Lots of free publicity.

Nope. The grammar was so distracting that I don't even remember what product was being advertised. I do remember "gee ess per second", so it was either a scope or an arbitrary generator.

OldSchoolTechCorner · « **Reply #27 on:** October 31, 2015, 05:48:06 am »

Has a optional "capacitor type LCD", interesting new technology?

crispy_tofu · « **Reply #28 on:** October 31, 2015, 05:49:07 am »

And there's a 13200 mega amp battery... how big is this thing??

OldSchoolTechCorner · « **Reply #29 on:** October 31, 2015, 05:53:53 am »

Quote from: crispy_tofu on October 31, 2015, 05:49:07 am

And there's a 13200 mega amp battery... how big is this thing??

Still stuck on wondering, how they manage to fit it inside the scope? That has to be one very large battery.

miguelvp · « **Reply #30 on:** October 31, 2015, 05:54:15 am »

Quote from: bitseeker on October 31, 2015, 05:35:41 am

Quote from: ez24 on October 31, 2015, 05:04:40 am
SO are we going to buy one now? Lots of free publicity.

Nope. The grammar was so distracting that I don't even remember what product was being advertised. I do remember "gee ess per second", so it was either a scope or an arbitrary generator.

I thought it meant it had some kind of wireless mobile tech, but since it wasn't anything near 4G I tuned it out.

nbritton · « **Reply #31 on:** October 31, 2015, 05:58:59 am »

Regardless of whether it's a voice-over artist or synthesized voice it makes Owon look like a total joke. This is as brand damaging as anything I've seen Siglent do. I can't stop laughing (at them).

Have you ever read the manual for the Banggood.com M12864 LCR meter, that 'shure' was hilarious: https://copy.com/wBdnTSsdB3DBEmT6

tec5c · « **Reply #32 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:05:15 am »

Quote from: SL4P on October 31, 2015, 03:20:48 am

Quote from: tec5c on October 30, 2015, 10:22:49 am
Quote from: wilfred on October 30, 2015, 10:14:38 am
Why?
OK "Even I can't understand it correctly" would be better but for a non-native English speaker it was not really worthy of criticism.
Right, and the worse thing in the video is the voice over actor saying "mega amp..." which has nothing to do with the language barrier. In this sense, nothing in the video is worth criticising.

... and the worse thing in the video...
I dunno, but I reckon it could have been a worse thing, or the worst thing...
(worse is relative, worst is absolute - but hey, I'm only a povo speaker in a glass house.)

Sigh.

crispy_tofu · « **Reply #33 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:08:33 am »

Quote from: nbritton on October 31, 2015, 05:58:59 am

Have you ever read the manual for the Banggood.com M12864 LCR meter, that 'shure' was hilarious: https://copy.com/wBdnTSsdB3DBEmT6

I don't find it too bad, but 'welding' makes me cringe! But hey, they 'hope I have delight in my DIY journey'

OldSchoolTechCorner · « **Reply #34 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:09:23 am »

Notice the sweatshop they are running, they couldn't get a bigger fan?

tec5c · « **Reply #35 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:09:38 am »

crispy_tofu, do you do anything besides live on this forum?

crispy_tofu · « **Reply #36 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:11:12 am »

Quote from: tec5c on October 31, 2015, 06:09:38 am

crispy_tofu, do you do anything besides live on this forum?

Nope

tec5c · « **Reply #37 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:14:08 am »

Quote from: crispy_tofu on October 31, 2015, 06:11:12 am

Quote from: tec5c on October 31, 2015, 06:09:38 am
crispy_tofu, do you do anything besides live on this forum?
Nope

Such a waste.

OldSchoolTechCorner · « **Reply #38 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:14:34 am »

Quote from: nbritton on October 31, 2015, 05:58:59 am

Regardless of whether it's a voice-over artist or synthesized voice it makes Owon look like a total joke. This is as brand damaging as anything I've seen Siglent do. I can't stop laughing (at them).

Have you ever read the manual for the Banggood.com M12864 LCR meter, that 'shure' was hilarious: https://copy.com/wBdnTSsdB3DBEmT6

"The resistance welding"

nbritton · « **Reply #39 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:14:53 am »

13,200,000,000 amps @ 3.7 volts, great scott, that will power a whole fleet of DeLoreans!

bitseeker · « **Reply #40 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:24:42 am »

Quote from: nbritton on October 31, 2015, 06:14:53 am

13,200,000,000 amps @ 3.7 volts, great scott, that will power a whole fleet of DeLoreans!

48.84GW. Yep, that's enough for 40 trips through time, or one trip for 40 DeLoreans.

Someone · « **Reply #41 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:25:41 am »

Quote from: OldSchoolTechCorner on October 31, 2015, 06:09:23 am

Notice the sweatshop they are running, they couldn't get a bigger fan?

"reckoned to be the most affordable and adorable test equipment ever"

bitseeker · « **Reply #42 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:36:32 am »

Quote from: Someone on October 31, 2015, 06:25:41 am

"reckoned to be the most affordable and adorable test equipment ever"

The narration on this one was quite good, but that "adorable test equipment" was quite hilarious. Completely caught me off guard.

DimitriP · « **Reply #43 on:** October 31, 2015, 08:04:10 am »

Whether it was a voice actor or a synthesized voice, someone approved it. Sure they missed the Mega-amps, But hey it could be worse:
Jennifer Anniston has nightmares not finding the shower on an airplane ....

miguelvp · « **Reply #44 on:** October 31, 2015, 08:09:33 am »

Quote from: DimitriP on October 31, 2015, 08:04:10 am

Whether it was a voice actor or a synthesized voice, someone approved it. Sure they missed the Mega-amps, But hey it could be worse:
Jennifer Anniston has nightmares not finding the shower on an airplane ....

You bet it could be worse, I was in the shower of that airplane waiting for her to show up.

crispy_tofu · « **Reply #45 on:** October 31, 2015, 08:33:21 am »

The left phalange on the plane is missing!!

John_ITIC · « **Reply #46 on:** October 31, 2015, 05:28:42 pm »

Be careful; I notice lots of smug comments about less than perfect translation. Most responses are from Aussies and Yanks, while the Chinese are busy working, taking the jobs and profit away from us lazy westerners. Also, many are quick to pick on language issues (making one feel superior) while at the same time buying the same products criticized (because one doesn't have the buying power to buy higher-end products). Tek and HP used to be the only companies with engineering skills to create such complex instruments. These days, china churns out many thousands of engineers while Westerners are getting fatter and lazier. HP aint what it used to be (nor Agilent.. ahem Keysight). Jobs are being outsourced in the thousands every year etc.

Yada, Yada, Yada - I think I made my point.

Anyways, translations and double-translations can be funny, indeed...

amirm · « **Reply #47 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:44:00 pm »

Quote from: OldSchoolTechCorner on October 31, 2015, 06:09:23 am

Notice the sweatshop they are running, they couldn't get a bigger fan?

Doesn't look like a sweatshop to me by Asian standards. I worked for Sony and their R&D offices was 10 times more cramped than this. If they could put multiple engineers in the same chair they would! And their machine shops in remote areas looked this way or worse.

As to the fan, safety standards are far lower than ours of course even in Japan. OSHA inspectors would have a heart attack at the best machine shops there!

Vgkid · « **Reply #48 on:** October 31, 2015, 06:56:03 pm »

A Tonghui 2828 1Mhz LCR meter, nice. I was actually rather impressed by that video.


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Author Topic: Voice-over Artist Reading OWON Marketing Chinglish (Read 18073 times)

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