Lost in translation
Willie pointed out this interesting Newsday article Spanish callers get lost in translation about the added difficulties in designing an automated voice recognition system that is to be used by multi-lingual speakers. Here's a snippet:
Part of the reason is that people don't always use pure Spanish, speech experts said, but a mix of Spanish and English. Some Hispanics might say, "uno dos tres Seventh Ave." Others might say, "one twenty-three Seventh Avenue." Still others might say "uno dos tres Septima Avenida," or "uno dos tres Avenida Siete," and other possibilities.
Building a voice recognition system that works well with native English speakers is challenging enough, but that is not going to good enough for a large (and growing) segment of the population.