Patent ID: 6832191
Filing Date: 2004-12-14
Classification: G10L

Abstract:
A process for implementing a speech recognizer for a given language (5) in conditions of essential unavailability of training speech material for such language, comprising the steps of:creating a multilingual speech recognizer (2) for N known languages based on related training speech materials available for such known languages, such multilingual speech recognizer (2) being created by identifying, for such known N languages, respective sets of context dependent models as respective transitions and merging the transitions of such respective sets into classes of transitions of the multilingual recognizer (2), such merging being performed independently of the respective known language of the transitions and as a function of the distance between transitions, and modifying said multilingual recognizer for the given language in the conditions of essential unavailability of training speech material by interpolation staring from said multilingual recognizer, said interpolation including the operation of initializing context-independent units (CI) of such given language with an operation of associations with unit models of such multilingual recognizer (2), and comprising the steps of: defining (101) context-independent units (CI) of such given language, implementing such association operation as mapping (104) between previously defined context-independent units (CI) of such given language and the context-independent units (CI) of such multilingual recognizer so as to generate as a recognizer for such given language (5) the recognizer resulting from such mapping operation (104), wherein said associated units are used to obtain transition models of the given language and subsequently transition classes of said multilingual recognizer, and wherein transitions not included between transitions of the languages of said plurality of N languages are approximated with respective approximation transitions comprised in the transition classes of the multilingual recognizer (2), the approximation to include the operations of: identifying at least one phoneme between a right and a left phonemes defining the transition not included in the transition classes of the multilingual recognizer, and replacing at least one of said right and left phonemes with at least one respective replacement phoneme close in distance and belonging to a transition included in the transition classes of the multilingual recognizer (2) until a transition included in the transition classes of the multilingual recognizer (2) is reached as an approximation.