SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MULTIPLE LANGUAGE DOCUMENT NARRATION

• US 20100324904A1
• Filed: 01/14/2010
• Published: 12/23/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 01/15/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: T Play Holdings LLC (SoftBank Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: K-NFB Reading Technology Inc.
• Inventors: Albrecht, Paul, Kurzweil, Raymond C., Chapman, Peter
• Granted Patent: US 8,498,866 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/260
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems

Abstract

Disclosed are techniques and systems to provide a narration of a text in multiple different languages where the portions of the text narrated using the different voices associated with different languages are selected by a user.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method, the method comprising:

displaying a sequence of words on a user interface rendered on a display device;

associating, by one or more computers, a first character to a first portion of words in the sequence of words, the first character having an associated first voice model associated with a first language, the first portion of words in the sequence of words selected by the a user;

associating, by the one or more computers, a second character to a second portion of words in the sequence of words, the second character having an associated second voice model with and associated second language that is different from the first language, the second portion of the words in the sequence of words being different from the first portion of words in the sequence of words;

narrating, by the one or more computers, the first portion of words in the first language using the first voice model; and

narrating, by the one or more computers, the second portion of words in the second language using the second voice model.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising applying, in response to the user-based selection of a first portion of words in the sequence of words, a first indicia to the user-selected first portion of words in the sequence of words .

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the second portion of the words in the sequence of words comprises a non-selected portion.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein, associating the first character with the first portion of words in the sequence of words comprises receiving a user selection of one of a plurality characters from a drop down menu.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein, associating the second character to the second portion of words in the sequence of words comprises receiving a user selection of one of a plurality characters from a drop down menu.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein

narrating the first portion of words in the first language using the first voice model comprises generating an audible output corresponding to first portion of words using a text-to-speech application;

and

narrating the second portion of words in the second language using the second voice model comprises generating an audible output corresponding to second portion of words using the text-to-speech application.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the first voice model comprises a first text-to-speech voice model;

and the second voice model comprises a second text-to-speech voice model that is different from the first text-to-speech voice model.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the audible output comprises using an audio recording.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the audio recording is an audio recording of a person speaking the selected words.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the sequence of words comprises a sequence of words selected from the group consisting of an electronic version of a book, an electronic version of a magazine, an electronic version of a play, and an electronic version of a newspaper.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing a plurality of characters having different associated voice models and enabling a user to select characters from the plurality of characters to associate with different portions of the sequence of words.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

modifying one or both of the first and second voice models by at least one of modifying a reading speed associated with the voice model, modifying a volume associated with the voice model, modifying the gender of the character associated with the voice model, modifying the age of the character and modifying a language of the voice model.

13. A computer program product residing on a computer readable medium, the computer program product comprising instructions for causing a processor to:

display a sequence of words on a user interface rendered on a display device;

associate a first character to a first portion of words in the sequence of words, the first character having an associated first voice model associated with a first language, the first portion of words in the sequence of words selected by the a user;

associate a second character to a second portion of words in the sequence of words, the second character having an associated second voice model with and associated second language that is different from the first language, the second portion of the words in the sequence of words being different from the first portion of words in the sequence of words;

narrate the first portion of words in the first language using the first voice model; and

narrate the second portion of words in the second language using the second voice model.

14. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the second portion of the words in the sequence of words comprises a non-selected portion.

15. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the instructions to narrate the first portion of words in the first language using the first voice model comprise instructions to generate an audible output corresponding to first portion of words using a text-to-speech application;

and

the instructions to narrate the second portion of words in the second language using the second voice model comprise instructions to generate an audible output corresponding to second portion of words using the text-to-speech application, wherein the first voice model comprises a first text-to-speech voice model; and

the second voice model comprises a second text-to-speech voice model that is different from the first text-to-speech voice model.

16. The computer program product of claim 13, further comprising instructions to cause the processor to provide a plurality of characters having different associated voice models and enable a user to select characters from the plurality of characters to associate with different portions of the sequence of words.

17. A system comprising:

a memory; and

a computing device configured to;

display a sequence of words on a user interface rendered on a display device;

associate a first character to a first portion of words in the sequence of words, the first character having an associated first voice model associated with a first language, the first portion of words in the sequence of words selected by the a user;

associate a second character to a second portion of words in the sequence of words, the second character having an associated second voice model with and associated second language that is different from the first language, the second portion of the words in the sequence of words being different from the first portion of words in the sequence of words;

narrate the first portion of words in the first language using the first voice model; and

narrate the second portion of words in the second language using the second voice model.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the second portion of the words in the sequence of words comprises a non-selected portion.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the processor is further configured to provide a plurality of characters having different associated voice models and enable a user to select characters from the plurality of characters to associate with different portions of the sequence of words.