Method of generating speech from text

• US 20040215462A1
• Filed: 04/06/2004
• Published: 10/28/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 04/25/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: WSOU Investments, LLC (WSOU Holdings, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Alcatel SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Sienel, Jurgen, Kopp, Dieter
• Granted Patent: US 9,286,885 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/260
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/047 Architecture of speech synthesisers

Abstract

In a method of generating speech from text the speech segments necessary to put together the text to be output as speech by a terminal are determined; it is checked, which speech segments are already present in the terminal and which ones need to be transmitted from a server to the terminal; the segments to be transmitted to the terminal are indexed; the speech segments and the indices of segments to be output at the terminal are transmitted; an index sequence of speech segments to be put together to form the speech to be output is transmitted; and the segments are concatenated according to the index sequence. This method allows to realize a distributed speech synthesis system requiring only a low transmission capacity, a small memory and low computational power in the terminal.

Claims

1. Method of generating speech from text comprising the steps of

determining the speech segments necessary to put together the text to be output as speech by a terminal;

checking which speech segments are already present in the terminal and which ones need to be transmitted from a server to the terminal;

indexing the segments to be transmitted to the terminal;

transmitting the speech segments and the indices of segments to be output at the terminal;

transmitting an index sequence of speech segments to be put together to form the speech to be output;

concatenating the segments according to the index sequence.

2. Method according to claim 1, wherein the segments to be transmitted to the terminal are chosen from a database of speech segments.

3. Method according to claim 1, wherein the speech segments to be transmitted to the terminal are phonetized in the server.

4. Method according to claim 1, wherein the speech generated from the concatenated segments is post-processed.

5. Method according to claim 1, wherein the speech segments are associated with a time-to-live value and the index lists at the terminal and the server are maintained according to these values.

6. Method according to claim 1, wherein the subsequent speech to be output is anticipated and necessary segments for the anticipated speech signal are transmitted to the terminal.

7. Method according to claim 1, wherein an enabling signal is sent to the terminal, allowing the terminal to start with the speech output.

8. Terminal suitable for outputting speech messages comprising a cache memory for storing speech segments, an index list of the indices associated with the speech segments and means for concatenating the speech segments according to an index sequence.

9. Server for text to speech synthesis comprising means for indexing speech segments and means for selecting missing speech segments to be transmitted to a terminal which are necessary to compose a speech message in the terminal together with speech segments already present in the terminal.

10. Distributed speech synthesis system comprising at least one terminal suitable for outputting speech messages comprising a cache memory for storing speech segments, an index list of the indices associated with the speech segments and means for concatenating the speech segments according to an index sequence and at least one server according to claim 9 which are connected by a communications connection.