Language independent phoneme mapping for foreign TTS.
Leonardo Badino, Claudia Barolo, Silvia Quazza · 2004
This note describes a tentative solution to the problem of mixed language texts in TTS applications. The multilanguage modular architecture of Loquendo TTS has been exploited to provide a range of user options, allowing to guess the language of paragraphs/phrase/words and to switch between voices in different languages, or between foreign accents of the same voice. This note focuses on a Phoneme Mapping algorithm enabling any TTS voice to speak all the languages provided by the system. The approach is quite general and language independent, entirely phonetics-based. The obtained foreign pronunciation is by definition approximated but plausible and suitable to reading foreign words or phrases embedded in a text. 1.