Biographical Information
Sondra Ahlén has 15 years computational linguistics experience and is the principal consultant and owner of SAVIC, an independent VUI firm in California's Sierra Foothills. Her experience includes design, tuning, and mentoring for speech recognition systems across a broad range of industry verticals, including 15 applications in Spanish and Portuguese. She has published articles on Edify research into how U.S. addresses are spoken in Spanish, and guided the VUI translation of BeVocal's U.S. Spanish address module. Prior to founding SAVIC, she was a Senior VUI Designer at Nuance. Sondra holds an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh, a B.S. in Computer Science and an A.A. in Spanish.
Articles by Sondra Ahlén
Top 10 Survival Strategies for Spanish Applications
08 Jul 2004
The companion piece to ¿Bueno? Are You Listening to Your Spanish Speakers by Sondra Ahlén, Lizanne Kaiser and Eduardo Olvera.
Bueno? Are You Listening to Your Spanish Speakers
08 Jul 2004
Spanish speakers are the fastest growing population in the United States. To realize the full potential of this largely untapped market, businesses must plan for the impact this will have on self-service automation; voice user interface designers need to incorporate best practices targeted for these users; and the industry as a whole should offer technology solutions and packaged applications specific to Spanish as spoken in the United States.