System and method for correcting errors when generating a TTS voice

• US 7,742,921 B1
• Filed: 09/27/2005
• Issued: 06/22/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/27/2005
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Cerence Operating Company (Cerence Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Davis, Steven Lawrence, Schulz, David Eugene, Loney, Louise, Gustafson, Beverly, Fetters, Shane
• Primary Examiner(s): Hudspeth, David R
• Assistant Examiner(s): ALBERTALLI, BRIAN LOUIS
• Application Number:
  US11/235,821
• Time in Patent Office: 1,729 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 704/270
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 21/06 Transformation of speech into a non-audible representation, e.g. speech visualisation or speech processing for tactile aids G10L15/26 takes precedence

Abstract

Disclosed herein are various innovations associated with a toolkit used for generating a TTS voice for use in a spoken dialog system. The inventions in each case may be in the form of the system, a computer-readable medium or a method for generating the TTS voice. An embodiment of the invention relates to a method of enabling human workers to find errors when developing a text-to-speech (TTS) voice. The method comprises presenting a graphical user interface wherein after a first pass of automatic speech recognition (ASR) of a speech corpus is complete, the interface presents to a worker a graphical representation of an alignment of the ASR results, associated words and phonemes and the audio, receiving a graphical input from the worker associated with a selection of a word or phoneme and presenting the audio associated with the selected word or phoneme.

Claims

1. A method of enabling human workers to find errors when developing a text-to-speech (TTS) voice, the method comprising:

presenting via a processor a graphical user interface, wherein after a first pass of automatic speech recognition (ASR) of a speech corpus is complete, the interface presents to a worker a graphical representation of an alignment of the ASR results, associated words and phonemes and the audio;

color-coding via the processor each word based on a composition of the color-coding associated with each phoneme;

receiving via the processor a graphical input from the worker associated with a selection of a word or phoneme; and

presenting via the processor the audio associated with the selected word or phoneme.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

color-coding each phoneme according to a confidence score.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

color-coding each word according to a confidence score.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising presenting only words and phonemes to the worker that have confidence scores below a certain threshold.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

receiving a selection of at least one word or phoneme from the worker; and

presenting a text transcription and corresponding audio to the worker for the selected word or phoneme.

6. The method of claim 4, further comprising presenting a listing of transcriptions to the worker associated with the presented words and phonemes.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising presenting a spectrogram associated with the selected word or phoneme.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving an indication of an ASR mistake from the worker;

correcting speaker dependent entries associated with the mistake; and

rerunning ASR on all utterances containing the word or phoneme associated with the mistake.

9. A tangible computer-readable storage medium storing instructions for controlling a computing device to enable human workers to find errors when developing a text-to-speech (TTS) voice, the instructions comprising:

presenting a graphical user interface wherein after a first pass of automatic speech recognition (ASR) of a speech corpus is complete, the interface presents to a worker a graphical representation of an alignment of the ASR results, associated words and phonemes and the audio;

color-coding each word based on a composition of the color-coding associated with each phoneme;

receiving a graphical input from the worker associated with a selection of a word or phoneme; and

presenting the audio associated with the selected word or phoneme.

10. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, the instructions further comprising:

color-coding each phoneme according to a confidence score.

11. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, the instructions further comprising:

color-coding each word according to a confidence score.

12. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, the instructions further comprising presenting only words and phonemes to the worker that have confidence scores below a certain threshold.

13. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, the instructions further comprising:

receiving a selection of at least one word or phoneme from the worker; and

presenting a text transcription and corresponding audio to the worker for the selected word or phoneme.

14. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, the instructions further comprising presenting a listing of transcriptions to the worker associated with the presented words and phonemes.

15. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, the instructions further comprising presenting a spectrogram associated with the selected word or phoneme.

16. The tangible computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, the instructions further comprising:

receiving an indication of an ASR mistake from the worker;

correcting speaker dependent entries associated with the mistake; and

rerunning ASR on all utterances containing the word or phoneme associated with the mistake.

17. A computing device for enabling human workers to find errors when developing a text-to-speech (TTS) voice, the computing device comprising:

a processor;

a module configured to control the processor to present a graphical user interface wherein after a first pass of automatic speech recognition (ASR) of a speech corpus is complete, the interface presents to a worker a graphical representation of an alignment of the ASR results, associated words and phonemes and the audio;

a module configured to control the processor to color-code each word based on a composition of the color-coding associated with each phoneme;

a module configured to control the processor to receive a graphical input from the worker associated with a selection of a word or phoneme; and

a module configured to control the processor to present the audio associated with the selected word or phoneme.

18. The computing device of claim 17, further comprising:

a module configured to control the processor to color-code each phoneme according to a confidence score.