A rule-based Arabic text-to-speech system based on hybrid synthesis technique
The field of speech synthesis or Text-To-Speech has rapidly expanded during last few years due to the wide range of applications that require human-machine interaction. Arabic language, the fourth most spoken language on the globe, has received the attention of the researchers in development of a...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Thomson Reuters
2011
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://irep.iium.edu.my/2820/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/2820/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/2820/1/Jamal-1.pdf |
| Summary: | The field of speech synthesis or Text-To-Speech has rapidly expanded during last few years
due to the wide range of applications that require human-machine interaction. Arabic language, the
fourth most spoken language on the globe, has received the attention of the researchers in
development of an intelligible and close to natural Text-To-Speech system. Most of the available
Arabic Text-To-Speech systems have drawbacks such as discontinuity, limited vocabulary and poor
naturalness. A rule-based Arabic Text-To-Speech system using hybrid synthesis is presented in this
paper. Sinusoidal model and concatenation using phonemes as the unit of speech were used to
implement the hybrid synthesis system. A set of rules was constructed to achieve letter-to-sound
mapping and an exception lexicon to cover the words that does not follow a certain pronunciation
rule. Using rule-based synthesis makes the system vocabulary independent. A special phonemes
inventory was constructed to be used for the Arabic Text-To-Speech. Applying the accurate stress
pattern for Arabic words was successfully achieved which contributed to the overall quality of the
resultant speech. The evaluation results exhibit high level of intelligibility with acceptable naturalness
with an overall rate of categorical estimation test 3.458 out of 5. |
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