Systems and methods for cross-lingual audio search

• US 8,805,869 B2
• Filed: 06/28/2011
• Issued: 08/12/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2011
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Ajmera, Jitendra, Verma, Ashish
• Primary Examiner(s): BOWEN, RICHARD L
• Application Number:
  US13/170,784
• Publication Number:
  US 20130007035A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,141 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/769
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/632 Query formulation
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence

Abstract

Methods and arrangements for executing an audio search. A search query in a first language variety is accepted, the search query being in a form of at least one of: text and audio. A corpus of material in the first language variety is accessed, and first language variety baseforms are obtained via data obtained from a second language variety. A first language variety phonetic model is built, and the first language variety phonetic model and the second language variety are employed in executing an audio search based on the accepted search query.

Claims

1. An apparatus comprising:

at least one processor; and

a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith and executable by the at least one processor, the computer readable program code comprising;

computer readable program code configured to accept a search query in a first language variety, the search query being in a form of at least one of;

text and audio;

computer readable program code configured to access a corpus of material in the first language variety;

computer readable program code configured to determine similarity of a second language variety with respect to a first language variety;

computer readable program code configured to choose the second language variety based on determining that the first language variety baseforms can be obtained via data from the second language variety, and at least one selection criterion;

the at least one selection criterion comprising a ranking from among ranked pairs of language varieties, the ranked pairs being ranked on a basis of determined similarity between language varieties;

computer readable program code configured to obtain first language variety baseforms via data obtained from the second language variety;

computer readable program code configured to thereupon build a first language variety phonetic model, based on the first language variety baseforms obtained via data obtained from the second language variety; and

computer readable program code configured to employ the first language variety phonetic model and the second language variety in executing an audio search based on the accepted search query.

2. A computer program product comprising:

a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith, the computer readable program code comprising;

computer readable program code configured to accept a search query in a first language variety, the search query being in a form of at least one of;

text and audio;

computer readable program code configured to access a corpus of material in the first language variety;

computer readable program code configured to determine similarity of a second language variety with respect to a first language variety;

computer readable program code configured to choose the second language variety based on determining that the first language variety baseforms can be obtained via data from the second language variety, and at least one selection criterion;

the at least one selection criterion comprising a ranking from among ranked pairs of language varieties, the ranked pairs being ranked on a basis of determined similarity between language varieties;

computer readable program code configured to obtain first language variety baseforms via data obtained from the second language variety;

computer readable program code configured to thereupon build a first language variety phonetic model, based on the first language variety baseforms obtained via data obtained from the second language variety; and

computer readable program code configured to employ the first language variety phonetic model and the second language variety in executing an audio search based on the accepted search query.

3. The computer program product according to claim 2, wherein:

said computer readable program code is further configured to pre-process search data in the first language variety;

said computer readable program code is configured to obtain first language variety baseforms via employing models trained on the second language variety; and

said computer readable program code is configured to search the search data for the accepted search query via comparing the accepted search query and the search data.

4. The computer program product according to claim 3, wherein:

said computer readable program code is configured to obtain baseforms for words in the first language variety from the corpus; and

said computer readable program code is configured to pre-process search data in the first language variety via employing phonetic models from both the first language variety and the second language variety.

5. The computer program product according to claim 4, wherein said computer readable program code is configured to access a corpus of first language text material from a public sources and transliterating the text material into a script of the second language variety.

6. The computer program product according to claim 2, wherein said computer readable program code is configured to execute the audio search via employing a statistical model trained using dictionary data of the second language variety.

7. The computer program product according to claim 2, wherein said computer readable program code is configured to execute the audio search via employing at least one acoustic model of the second language variety and the phonetic language model of the first language variety.

8. The computer program product according to claim 2, wherein said employing comprises generating a phonetic index for the search data.

9. The computer program product according to claim 8, wherein said computer readable program code is configured to generate a phonetic lattice of the search query in the first language variety.

10. The computer program product according to claim 9, wherein the phonetic index of the search data comprises a phonetic lattice representation of the search data.

11. The computer program product according to claim 9, wherein:

said computer readable program code is configured to accept a search query in the form of text; and

said computer readable program code is configured to generate at least one baseform of the accepted search query and convert the at least one baseform to a phonetic lattice.

12. The computer program product according to claim 9, wherein:

said computer readable program code is configured to accept a search query in the form of audio; and

said computer readable program code is configured to generate a phonetic lattice of the search query directly via employing an acoustic model of the second language variety and the phonetic language model of the first language variety.