Patent ID: 8768687

Claim:
A method performed by data processing apparatus, the method comprising: receiving a voice input corresponding to an utterance; determining that the transcription of the utterance includes a first segment comprising a command to initiate a communication to a user; classifying a second segment of the transcription as indirect speech; in response to determining that the transcription of the utterance includes the command and the second segment that is classified as indirect speech: providing the second segment that is classified as indirect speech as input to a machine translator that is configured to convert the second segment that is classified as indirect speech into a direct speech segment by replacing at least one word of the second segment with a different word that communicates direct speech, such that at least a grammatical structure, a tense of one or more words, or both, of the second segment is changed; in response to providing the second segment that is classified as indirect speech to the machine translator, receiving the direct speech segment from the machine translator; and initiating a communication that includes the direct speech segment.