Text-to-speech method and system, computer program product therefor
First Claim
1. A method for text-to-speech conversion of a text in a first language comprising sections in at least one second language, comprising the steps of:
- converting said sections in said second language into phonemes of said second language;
mapping at least part of said phonemes of said second language onto sets of phonemes of said first language;
including said sets of phonemes of said first language resulting from said mapping in the stream of phonemes of said first language representative of said text to produce a resulting stream of phonemes; and
generating a speech signal from said resulting stream of phonemes,wherein said step of mapping comprises;
carrying out non-acoustic similarity tests between each phoneme of said phonemes of said second language being mapped and a set of candidate mapping phonemes of said first language, said similarity tests performing a category-to-category comparison between a vector representative of phonetic categories of each of said phonemes of said second language and a vector representative of phonetic categories of each of said set of candidate mapping phonemes, said similarity test being independent of said first language and said second language;
assigning respective scores to the results of said tests; and
mapping each said phoneme of said second language onto a set of mapping phonemes of said first language selected from said candidate mapping phonemes as a function of said scores.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A text-to-speech system adapted to operate on text in a first language including sections in a second language, includes a grapheme/phoneme transcriptor for converting the sections in the second language into phonemes of the second language; a mapping module configured for mapping at least part of the phonemes of the second language onto sets of phonemes of the first language; and a speech-synthesis module adapted to be fed with a resulting stream of phonemes including the sets of phonemes of the first language resulting from mapping and the stream of phonemes of the first language representative of the text, and to generate a speech signal from the resulting stream of phonemes.
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Citations
17 Claims
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1. A method for text-to-speech conversion of a text in a first language comprising sections in at least one second language, comprising the steps of:
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converting said sections in said second language into phonemes of said second language; mapping at least part of said phonemes of said second language onto sets of phonemes of said first language; including said sets of phonemes of said first language resulting from said mapping in the stream of phonemes of said first language representative of said text to produce a resulting stream of phonemes; and generating a speech signal from said resulting stream of phonemes, wherein said step of mapping comprises; carrying out non-acoustic similarity tests between each phoneme of said phonemes of said second language being mapped and a set of candidate mapping phonemes of said first language, said similarity tests performing a category-to-category comparison between a vector representative of phonetic categories of each of said phonemes of said second language and a vector representative of phonetic categories of each of said set of candidate mapping phonemes, said similarity test being independent of said first language and said second language; assigning respective scores to the results of said tests; and mapping each said phoneme of said second language onto a set of mapping phonemes of said first language selected from said candidate mapping phonemes as a function of said scores. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 17)
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10. A system for text-to-speech conversion of a text in a first language comprising sections in at least one second language, comprising:
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a grapheme/phoneme transcriptor for converting said sections in said second language into phonemes of said second language; a mapping module configured for mapping at least part of said phonemes of said second language onto sets of phonemes of said first language; a speech-synthesis module adapted to be fed with a resulting stream of phonemes including said sets of phonemes of said first language resulting from said mapping and the stream of phonemes of said first language representative of said text, and to generate a speech signal from said resulting stream of phonemes, wherein said mapping module is configured for; carrying out non-acoustic similarity tests between each phoneme of said phonemes of said second language being mapped and a set of candidate mapping phonemes of said first language, said similarity tests performing a category-to-category comparison between a vector representative of phonetic categories of each of said phonemes of said second language and a vector representative of phonetic categories of each of said set of candidate mapping phonemes, said similarity test being independent of said first language and said second language; assigning respective scores to the results of said tests; and mapping each said phoneme of said second language onto a set of mapping phonemes of said first language selected from said candidate mapping phonemes as a function of said scores. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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Specification