From: kamol@ipied.tu.ac.th (Kamol Hengkietisak)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.thai
Subject: Bangkok Post Dec 25: Text to speech in Thai
Date: 23 Dec 92 17:18:52 GMT
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by Kulcharee Tansubhapol
 
CHULALONGKORN University's Linguistics Research Unit has completed the
first  Thai text-to-speech system prototype for PCs -- a system that
synthesizes Thai speech output using text input. The project will be
further developed into a speech recognition system.
 
Supervised by Dr Sudaporn Luksaneeyanawin, chief of the Linguistics
Research Unit of the Faculty of Arts of Chulalongkorn University, the
Thai text-to-speech system was funded by the National Electronics
Computer and Technology Centre (NECTEC) with a budget of some
1,030,000 baht. 
 
The project was started in 1989 by a research team of some 10 people.
 
According to Dr Sudaporn, the Thai text-to-speech system was part of
an artificial intelligence project aimed at creating artificial
language skills where computers were made to speak or narrate Thai
similar to a person for use as a computer aided instruction tool to
assist students with spelling and pronunciation.
 
She said that the system was developed on a personal computer using
the C programming language and Foxbase package. She noted that they
decided to develop it on the PC platform because in Thailand this
package could then be further developed by local users who were
experienced with PCs. It would not have been practical to do it on a
workstation or some other platform, she added.
 
Development of the Thai text-to-speech system was divided into three
modules: a Thai text and character processing module, a sound unit
analysis module, and a speech sound synthesizing module.
 
She explained that the Thai text and character processing module
converted strings of Thai letters that were enterred into strings of
Thai phonetic words, while the under line module was
basically two dictionaries: a phonetic word dictionary and a sound
dictionary. And the sound synthesizing module mixed the proper sound
unofficially.
 
Dr Sudaporn said that Thai characters were much different from other
languages because of the nature of Thai written language which had no
spaces between words, nor full stops in sentences, and there was ambig
uity in certain words or sentences which ha
 
d different pronounciations due to vowels and consonants.
 
She added that the most painstaking work for the team was to process
the Thai characters into sound units which was done by consulting a
Thai encyclopedia. This task took about a year and a half year to
complete, she said.  
 
Although this was just a prototype, this results of this basic
research, she added, would be a tremendous source of information and
knowledge to the Linguistics Research Unit for further research in
speech technology and natural language processing.  
 
The Thai text-to-speech system now has two dictionaries of 30,000 Thai
words and some add-in technical terms and specific words in Thai.
 
Dr Sudaporn noted that the system could be applied for teaching
pronunciation and spelling to the blind, kindergaten students and
tourists. The next project was to further develop the system into a
speech recognition system, she said. 
 
Those interested in learning more about the Thai text-to-speech system
can contact Chulalongkorn University's Unisearch Centre.