Predicting the intonation of discourse segments from examples in dialogue speech.

Abstract

In the area of speech synthesis it is already possible to generate understandable speech with citation form prosody for simple written texts. However at ATR we are researching into speech synthesis techniques for use in speech translation environments. Dialogues in such conversations involve much richer forms of prosodic variation than are required for the reading of texts. In order for our translations to sound natural it is necessary for our synthesis system to offer a wide range of porosodic variability, which can be described at an appropriate level of abstraction.