Patent ID: 7031924

Claim:
A speech synthesizing apparatus for converting a plurality of text data into synthetic speech and outputting it, comprising: speech waveform generating means for generating synthetic speech waveforms of said plurality of text data; overlap detecting means for detecting the overlap of the synthetic speech waveforms of the plurality of said text data; display control means for controlling the displaying of a setting screen configured to set the importance of said plurality of text data in response to the output of said overlap detecting means; volume determining means for determining the volumes of the synthetic speech waveforms of each of said plurality of text data on the basis of the importance of said plurality of text data set by the setting screen; and speech output means for speech-synthesizing and outputting synthetic speech waveforms generated from said plurality of text data whose overlap has been detected at the volume determined by said volume determining means, wherein when two synthetic speech waveforms overlap each other, said speech output means makes the volume of one synthetic speech waveform a/(a+b) and makes the volume of the other synthetic speech waveform b/(a+b), where a is a value of a parameter of the importance of the one synthetic speech waveform, and b is a value of a parameter of the importance of the other synthetic speech waveform.