Patent ID: 8073677

Claim:
A speech translation apparatus using speech recognition comprising: a first generation unit configured to generating, via execution of instructions on a computer, a first text representing a speech recognition result obtained by subjecting an input speech in a first language to speech recognition, and first prosody information corresponding to the input speech, the first text containing a plurality of first portions each including at least one word; a second generation unit generating, from the first prosody information, first para-language information other than a text contained in the input speech, the first para-language information containing the first portions and a plurality of second portions; a first association unit associating each first portion of the first text with a corresponding first portion of the first portions of the first para-language information; a translation unit translating the first text into a plurality of second texts in a second language, the second texts each containing the second portions; a second association unit associating each second portion of the first para-language information with a corresponding second portion of the second portions of each of the second texts that is one portion obtained by translating each first portion of the first text; a third generation unit generating a plurality of second prosody information items based on speech feature amounts acquired from the second texts; a fourth generation unit generating a plurality of second para-language information items by changing order of the first and second portions of the first para-language information to correspond to the second texts, based on the second prosody information items, the second para-language information items corresponding to the second texts; a computation unit computing, for each second text, a degree of similarity between each of the first para-language information items and a corresponding one of the second para-language information items to obtain degrees of similarity for the second texts; a selection unit selecting, from the second prosody information items, maximum-degree-of-similarity prosody information corresponding to a maximum degree of similarity from the degrees of similarity; a fifth generation unit generating a prosody pattern of one of the second texts which corresponds to the maximum-degree-of-similarity prosody information, based on the maximum-degree-of-similarity prosody information; and an output unit outputting one of the second texts which corresponds to the maximum-degree-of-similarity prosody information, in a form of speech according to the prosody pattern.