Speech-to-speech generation system and method

• US 7,962,345 B2
• Filed: 08/23/2008
• Issued: 06/14/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/11/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Wei, Zhang, Liqin, Shen, Tang, Donald, Qin, Shi
• Primary Examiner(s): Hudspeth; David R
• Assistant Examiner(s): Neway; Samuel G
• Application Number:
  US12/197,243
• Publication Number:
  US 20080312920A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,025 Days
• Field of Search: 704/213, 704/235, 704/260, 704/277
• US Class Current: 704/277
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/04 Details of speech synthesis systems, e.g. synthesiser structure or memory management

Abstract

An expressive speech-to-speech generation system which can generate expressive speech output by using expressive parameters extracted from the original speech signal to drive the standard TTS system. The system comprises: speech recognition means, machine translation means, text-to-speech generation means, expressive parameter detection means for extracting expressive parameters from the speech of language A, and expressive parameter mapping means for mapping the expressive parameters extracted by the expressive parameter detection means from language A to language B, and driving the text-to-speech generation means by the mapping results to synthesize expressive speech.

Claims

1. A speech-to-speech generation system, comprising:

speech recognition means, for recognizing the speech of language A and creating the corresponding text of language A;

machine translation means for translating the text from language A to language B;

text-to-speech generation means, for generating the speech of language B according to the text of language B,

said speech-to-speech generation system is characterized by further comprising;

expressive parameter detection means, for extracting expressive parameters from the speech of language A, said expressive parameters comprising pitch, volume and duration at a word level and intonation and sentence envelope at a sentence level;

for obtaining normalized expressive parameters for language A based on a degree of variation of pitch, volume and duration at a word level and intonation and sentence envelope at a sentence level for words in a sentence and deriving relative expressive parameters from the normalized parameters;

for comparing relative parameters of expressive speech with those of reference speech to identify varying relative parameters to be provided to said expressive parameter mapping means; and

expressive parameter mapping means for mapping the identified varying relative parameters extracted by the expressive parameter detection means from language A to language B to obtain adjustment parameters for language B, and driving the text-to-speech generation means using the adjustment parameters mapping results to synthesize expressive speech in language B.

2. A system according to claim 1, characterized in that said expressive parameter detection means extracts expressive parameters at the syllable level.

3. A system according to claim 1, characterized in that said expressive parameter mapping means maps the varying relative parameters from language A to language B, then converts the expressive parameters of language B, using word level converting tables and sentence level converting tables, into adjustment parameters for adjusting the text-to-speech generation means by word level converting and sentence level converting.

4. A speech-to-speech generation system, comprising:

speech recognition means for recognizing the speech of dialect A and creating the corresponding text;

text-to-speech generation means for generating the speech of another dialect B according to the text,

said speech-to-speech generation system is characterized by further comprising;

expressive parameter detection means, for extracting expressive parameters from the speech of dialect A, said expressive parameters comprising pitch, volume and duration at a word level and intonation and sentence envelope at a sentence level;

for obtaining normalized expressive parameters for dialect A based on a degree of variation of pitch, volume and duration at a word level and intonation and sentence envelope at a sentence level for words in a sentence and deriving relative expressive parameters from the normalized parameters;

for comparing relative parameters of expressive speech with those of reference speech to identify varying relative parameters to be provided to said expressive parameter mapping means; and

expressive parameter mapping means for mapping the identified varying relative parameters extracted by the expressive parameter detection means from dialect A to dialect B to obtain adjustment parameters for dialect B, and driving the text-to-speech generation means using the adjustment parameters mapping results to synthesize expressive speech in dialect B.

5. A system according to claim 4, characterized in that said expressive parameter detection means extracts the expressive parameters at the syllable level.

6. A system according to claim 4, characterized in that said expressive mapping means maps the varying relative parameters from dialect A to dialect B, then converts the expressive parameters of dialect B, using word level converting tables and sentence level converting tables, into adjustment parameters for adjusting the text-to-speech generation means by word level converting and sentence level converting.