Conference call service with speech processing for heavily accented speakers
First Claim
1. A method of voice communication including voice recognition processing, said method comprising steps ofcapturing and identifying phonemes of individual words of a spoken speech string comprising spoken words,initiating a conference call,interrupting said conference call when a word of said speech string is not recognized,accessing text corresponding to a combination of phonemes identified in a spoken word of said speech string,synthesizing a pronunciation of said word of said speech string to provide a synthesized pronunciation, andsubstituting said synthesized pronunciation for said spoken word in said speech string.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Speech recognition processing captures phonemes of words in a spoken speech string and retrieves text of words corresponding to particular combinations of phonemes from a phoneme dictionary. A text-to-speech synthesizer then can produce and substitute a synthesized pronunciation of that word in the speech string. If the speech recognition processing fails to recognize a particular combination of phonemes of a word, as spoken, as may occur when a word is spoken with an accent or when the speaker has a speech impediment, the speaker is prompted to clarify the word by entry, as text, from a keyboard or the like for storage in the phoneme dictionary such that a synthesized pronunciation of the word can be played out when the initially unrecognized spoken word is again encountered in a speech string to improve intelligibility, particularly for conference calls.
21 Citations
16 Claims
-
1. A method of voice communication including voice recognition processing, said method comprising steps of
capturing and identifying phonemes of individual words of a spoken speech string comprising spoken words, initiating a conference call, interrupting said conference call when a word of said speech string is not recognized, accessing text corresponding to a combination of phonemes identified in a spoken word of said speech string, synthesizing a pronunciation of said word of said speech string to provide a synthesized pronunciation, and substituting said synthesized pronunciation for said spoken word in said speech string.
-
7. A method of providing a conference call service, said method comprising steps of
providing a phoneme dictionary storing text of words corresponding to combinations of spoken phonemes during a conference call, initiating a conference call, interrupting said conference call when a word of said speech string is not recognized, accessing text corresponding to a combination of phonemes in a spoken word of said speech string, synthesizing a pronunciation of said word of said speech string to provide a synthesized pronunciation, and substituting said synthesized pronunciation for said spoken word in said speech string.
-
12. Data processing apparatus configured to provide
a connection to a communication system capable of conducting a conference call, recognition of combinations of phonemes comprising words of a spoken speech string, interruption of said conference call when a word of said speech string is not recognized, memory comprising a phoneme dictionary containing text of words corresponding to respective ones of said combinations of phonemes, and a text-to-speech synthesizer for synthesizing words corresponding to said combinations of phonemes.
Specification