A text to speech interface for Universal Digital Library

The objective of Universal Digital Library (UDL) is to capture all books in digital format. A text to speech (TTS) interface for UDL portal would enable access to the digital content in voice mode, and also provide access to the digital content for illiterate and vision-impaired people. Our work focuses on design and implementation of text to speech interface for UDL portal primarily for Indian languages. This paper is aimed at identifying the issues involved in integrating text to speech system into UDL portal and describes the development process of Hindi, Telugu and Tamil voices under Festvox framework using unit selection techniques. We demonstrate the quality of the Tamil and Telugu voices and lay out the plan for integrating the TTS into the UDL portal.

Web Voice Browser Based on an ISLPC Text-to-Speech Algorithm

A kind of Web voice browser based on improved synchronous linear predictive coding （ISLPC） and Text-toSpeech （TTS） algorithm and Internet application was proposed. The paper analyzes the features of TTS system with ISLPC speech synthesis and discusses the design and implementation of ISLPC TTS-based Web voice browser. The browser integrates Web technology, Chinese information processing, artificial intelligence and the key technology of Chinese ISLPC speech synthesis. It＇s a visual and audible web browser that can improve information precision for network users. The evaluation results show that ISLPC-based TTS model has a better performance than other browsers in voice quality and capability of identifying Chinese characters.

A Unified Framework for Multilingual Text-to-Speech Synthesis with SSML Specification as Interface

This paper describes the design of a unified framework for a multilingual text-to-speech （TTS） synthesis engine - Crystal. The unified framework defines the common TTS modules for different languages and/or dialects. The interfaces between consecutive modules conform to the speech synthesis markup language （SSML） specification for standardization, interoperability, multilinguality, and extensibility. Detailed module divisions and implementation technologies for the unified framework are introduced, together with possible extensions for the algorithm research and evaluation of the TTS synthesis. Implementation of a mixed-language TTS system for Chinese Putonghua, Chinese Cantonese, and English demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed unified framework.