Patent ID: 7912719

Claim:
A speech synthesis device which synthesizes a speech having a desired voice characteristic, said device comprising: a speech element storage unit operable to store speech elements of plural voice characteristics; a target element information generation unit operable to generate speech element information based on language information including phoneme information; an element selection unit operable to select, from said speech element storage unit, a speech element sequence corresponding to the speech element information; a voice characteristics designation unit operable to accept a designation regarding a voice characteristic of a synthesized speech; a voice characteristics transformation unit operable to transform the speech element sequence selected by said element selection unit into a speech element sequence of the voice characteristic accepted by said voice characteristics designation unit; a distortion determination unit operable to determine a distortion between the speech element sequence after being transformed by said voice characteristics transformation unit and the speech element sequence before being transformed by said voice characteristics transformation unit; and a target element information correction unit operable to correct the speech element information generated by said target element information generation unit to speech element information corresponding to the speech element sequence after being transformed by said voice characteristics transformation unit, in the case where said distortion determination unit determines that the transformed speech element sequence is distorted, wherein said element selection unit is operable to select, from said speech element storage unit, a speech element sequence corresponding to the corrected speech element information, in the case where said target element information correction unit has corrected the speech element information.