INTERPRETATION TERMINALS AND METHOD FOR INTERPRETATION THROUGH COMMUNICATION BETWEEN INTERPRETATION TERMINALS

• US 20110301936A1
• Filed: 06/02/2011
• Published: 12/08/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/03/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Original Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Inventors: Yun, Seung, Kim, Sanghun
• Granted Patent: US 8,798,985 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/58 Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence

Abstract

A method for interpreting a dialogue between two terminals includes establishing a communication channel between interpretation terminals of two parties in response to an interpretation request; specifying a language of an initiating party and a language of the other party in each of the interpretation terminals of the two parties by exchanging information about the language of the initiating party used in the interpretation terminal of the initiating party and the language of the other party used in the interpretation terminal of the other party via the communication channel; recognizing speech uttered from the interpretation terminal of the initiating party; translating the speech recognized by the interpretation terminal of the initiating party into the language of the other party; and transmitting a sentence translated into the language of the other party to the interpretation terminal of the other party.

Claims

1. An interpretation terminal comprising:

a network interface for communicating with an interpretation terminal of the other party;

a speech recognizer for recognizing uttered speech from an initiating party;

a translation module for translating the speech recognized by the speech recognizer into a designated language; and

a controller for specifying an interpretation language through the network interface and providing a sentence translated by the translation module to the interpretation terminal of the other party.

2. The interpretation terminal of claim 1, wherein the network interface performs communication with the interpretation terminal of the other party via a wireless local area network (WLAN), via a mobile communication network, or via near field communications (NFC).

3. The interpretation terminal of claim 2, wherein the WLAN includes wireless-fidelity (Wi-Fi).

4. The interpretation terminal of claim 1, wherein, upon request for interpretation of a conversation with the other party, the network interface establishes a communication channel with the interpretation terminal of the other party to exchange information required for the establishment with the interpretation terminal of the other party.

5. The interpretation terminal of claim 1, wherein the controller unifies an interpretation range between the two parties by communicating with the interpretation terminal of the other party through the network interface.

6. The interpretation terminal of claim 5, wherein the information about the interpretation range defines a place and situation where the interpretation is performed.

7. The interpretation terminal of claim 1, wherein the speech recognizer detects noise from a speech signal of the initiating party, and performs speech recognition on the speech signal from which the noise is removed.

8. The interpretation terminal of claim 7, wherein the speech signal mixed with noise from the initiating party is compared with a noise signal transmitted from the interpretation terminal of the other party to detect a matching portion between the speech signal and the noise signal as noise.

9. The interpretation terminal of claim 1, further comprising:

a speech synthesizer for synthesizing the sentence translated by the translation module and outputting the sentence as voice.

10. The interpretation terminal of claim 9, wherein the pitch of the synthesized speech output by the speech synthesizer is set to be proportional to signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) between the noise signal previously transmitted from the interpretation terminal of the other party and the speech signal of the initiating party.

11. The interpretation terminal of claim 1, wherein the speech recognizer employs a dialog model to analysis the translated sentence, predict a next dialogue to be uttered based on the analysis result, and utilize the predicted dialog information in the recognition of speech to be uttered next.

12. A method for interpreting a dialogue between two terminals, the method comprising:

establishing a communication channel between interpretation terminals of two parties in response to an interpretation request;

specifying a language of an initiating party and a language of the other party in each of the interpretation terminals of the two parties by exchanging information about the language of the initiating party used in the interpretation terminal of the initiating party and the language of the other party used in the interpretation terminal of the other party via the communication channel;

recognizing speech uttered from the interpretation terminal of the initiating party;

translating the speech recognized by the interpretation terminal of the initiating party into the language of the other party; and

transmitting a sentence translated into the language of the other party to the interpretation terminal of the other party.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the communication channel is established through a wireless local area network (WLAN), a mobile communication network, or via near field communications (NFC).

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the WLAN includes wireless-fidelity (Wi-Fi).

15. The method of claim 12, wherein said recognizing speech includes:

performing synchronization between the interpretation terminals of the two parties;

detecting noise from a speech signal of the initiating party; and

performing speech recognition on the speech signal from which noise is removed.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein said detecting noise from the speech signal of the initiating party includes:

comparing the speech signal mixed with noise from the initiating party with a noise signal transmitted from the interpretation terminal of the other party; and

detecting a matching portion between the speech signal and the noise signal as noise.

17. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

performing speech synthesis on the translated sentence to output the sentence as voice.

18. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

unifying information defining an interpretation range between the two parties by communicating with the interpretation terminal of the other party.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the information about the interpretation range defines a place and situation where the interpretation is performed.