Data processing: speech signal processing, linguistics, language translation, and audio compression/decompression inventions 10/06

20060241934 - Apparatus and method for translating japanese into chinese, and computer program product therefor: A Japanese-to-Chinese machine translation apparatus includes, a translation dictionary memory that stores a Japanese-to-Chinese translation dictionary; a thesaurus memory that stores a Japanese thesaurus; a translation dictionary searching unit that searches the Japanese-to-Chinese translation dictionary for a Chinese word associated with an input Japanese word; a thesaurus searching unit that...

20060241933 - Predictive conversion of user input: Systems and methods for predictive conversion of user text input in one language or character set to another language or character set are disclosed. The method may generally include converting a partial user input in a non-target language or character set to a converted partial user input in a target...

20060241932 - Translation previewer and validator: A method and system for format checking a translated text in which the method includes displaying the translated text on a graphical user interface, determining whether the translated text is visually acceptable based on the displaying, and validating the translated text. The system includes a graphical user interface, a storage...

20060241935 - Method for setting main language in mobile terminal and mobile terminal implementing the same: A method for setting a main language in a mobile terminal, and a mobile terminal configured to implement the same, are provided, where at least one name of language available in the mobile terminal is displayed when a power key is pressed, and a language corresponding to a language name...

20060241936 - Pronunciation specifying apparatus, pronunciation specifying method and recording medium: Plural words which partially match the accepted character string data are extracted from a words dictionary. When the numeric character string contained in the accepted character string data has a numeric character string portion for which a partially matching word can not be extracted, a similar word which is similar...

20060241937 - Method and apparatus for automatically discriminating information bearing audio segments and background noise audio segments: A system (100) for automatically discriminating information bearing audio segments and mere background noise segments processes digitized audio to extract two discriminants between information bearing audio and mere background audio that have a relatively low correlation. One discriminant is based on the rate (relative to the sample rate) at which...

20060241938 - System for improving speech intelligibility through high frequency compression: A speech enhancement system that improves the intelligibility and the perceived quality of processed speech includes a frequency transformer and a spectral compressor. The frequency transformer converts speech signals from the time domain to the frequency domain. The spectral compressor compresses a pre-selected portion of the high frequency band and...

20060241939 - Method and system for masking speech: A simple and efficient method for producing an obfuscated speech signal which may be used to mask a stream of speech, is disclosed. A speech signal representing the speech stream to be masked is obtained. The speech signal is then temporally partitioned into segments, preferably corresponding to phonemes within the...

20060241940 - Quantization of speech and audio coding parameters using partial information on atypical subsequences: A method and apparatus is disclosed herein for a quantizing parameters using partial information on atypical subsequences. In one embodiment, the method comprises partially classifying a first plurality of subsequences in a target vector into a number of selected groups, creating a refined fidelity criterion for each subsequence of the...

20060241941 - Techniques for measurement of perceptual audio quality: An audio processing tool measures the quality of reconstructed audio data. For example, an audio encoder measures the quality of a block of reconstructed frequency coefficient data in a quantization loop. The invention includes several techniques and tools, which can be used in combination or separately. First, before measuring quality,...

20060241942 - Techniques for measurement of perceptual audio quality: An audio processing tool measures the quality of reconstructed audio data. For example, an audio encoder measures the quality of a block of reconstructed frequency coefficient data in a quantization loop. The invention includes several techniques and tools, which can be used in combination or separately. First, before measuring quality,...

20060241943 - Medical vocabulary templates in speech recognition: A system of templates of words and terms use in medicine and surgery by physicians for optimizing the outcomes of speech recognition process of converting digital voice data produced by physicians into digital text data comprises words and terms use in medical and surgical specialties. The medical and surgical vocabulary...

20060241944 - Method and system for generating spelling suggestions: A computer implemented method of suggesting replacement words for words of a string. In the method, an input string of input words is received. The input words are then matched to subject words of a candidate table. Next, candidate replacement words and scores from the candidate table corresponding to the...

20060241945 - Control of settings using a command rotor: Systems and methods are provided for adjusting parameter levels. A method can include providing a plurality of parameters, each parameter being adjustable over a dimension; enabling a set of keys to adjust the plurality of parameters; selecting from amongst the plurality of parameters a parameter for adjustment using a first...

20060241946 - Speech input interface for dialog systems: A method is described for operation of a dialog system (1) with a speech input interface (2) and an application (3) co-operating with the speech input interface (2). The speech input interface (2) detects audio speech signals (AS) of a user and converts these into a recognition result (ER) in...

20060241947 - Voice prompt generation using downloadable scripts: A device for generating voice prompts comprises a memory, a processor coupled to the memory, and audio playback circuitry coupled to the processor. The processor is configured to retrieve at least one voice prompt file from the memory, and to interpret the file for playback of an associated voice prompt...

20060241948 - Method and apparatus for obtaining complete speech signals for speech recognition applications: The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for obtaining complete speech signals for speech recognition applications. In one embodiment, the method continuously records an audio stream comprising a sequence of frames to a circular buffer. When a user command to commence or terminate speech recognition is received, the...

20060235676 - Method for compressing audio data: A method for representing the items of a data, especially an audio data, by using fixed bits, is provided. The method can improve the speed to compress and decompress the data and reduce the load of the processor....

20060235677 - Language converter with enhanced search capability: A weighted search program is disclosed. The weighted search program may be integrated into a translation program, or the weighted search program may be used independently with an available search engine. When integrated with the translation program, setting and weighting may be combined in a single search. In one embodiment,...

20060235678 - Apparatus and method of encoding audio data and apparatus and method of decoding encoded audio data: An apparatus and method encode audio data, and an apparatus and method decode encoded audio data. An audio data encoding apparatus includes: a scalable encoding unit dividing audio data into a plurality of layers, representing the audio data in predetermined numbers of bits in each of the plurality of layers,...

20060235679 - Adaptive grouping of parameters for enhanced coding efficiency: The present invention is based on the finding that parameters including a first set of parameters of a representation of a first portion of an original signal and including a second set of parameters of a representation of a second portion of the original signal can be efficiently encoded, when...

20060235680 - Apparatus, method and computer program product for processing acoustical-signal: An acoustical-signal processing apparatus includes a feature extracting unit that extracts feature data common to each channel signal which forms a multichannel acoustical signal, based on a composite similarity obtained by combining similarities calculated from each channel signal; and a time-base companding unit that executes time compression and time expansion...

20060235681 - Adaptive pulse allocation mechanism for linear-prediction based analysis-by-synthesis coders: A scheme of allocating variable pulses for each frame is proposed to reduce the bit-rate of LP based AbS coders while maintaining the same speech quality. Since speech signal is not stationary, the required pulse count in a speech coder should be variable frame by frame. In this patent the...

20060235682 - Excitation vector generator, speech coder and speech decoder: An excitation vector generator includes an input vector providing system that is capable of providing an input vector having at least one pulse, each pulse having a predetermined position and a respective polarity. A fixed waveform storage system is capable of storing at least one fixed waveform. An arranging system...

20060235683 - Lossless encoding of information with guaranteed maximum bitrate: A compact encoded representation of information values not exceeding a predefined size can be derived when a first encoding rule generating an encoded representation of the information values of variable length is compared to a second encoding rule generating an encoded representation of the information values of fixed length and...

20060235684 - Wireless device to access network-based voice-activated services using distributed speech recognition: A speech utterance is sensed using a mobile telecommunication device. The speech utterance is compressed into compressed data that is communicated from the mobile telecommunication device to a remote system. The remote system performs a first remote attempt to recognize the speech utterance using a personal directory specific to the...

20060235685 - Framework for voice conversion: This invention relates to a framework for converting a source speech signal associated with a source voice into a target speech signal that is a representation of the source speech signal associated with a target voice. The source speech signal is encoded into samples of encoding parameters, wherein the encoding...

20060235686 - Speech recognition device: Disclosed is a speech recognition device using a hidden Markov model and a two-level dynamic programming scheme. The speech recognition device includes an analog to digital converter for sampling and quantizing speech signals into digital speech signals; a noise eliminator for reducing noise from the digital speech signals; a feature...

20060235687 - System and method for adaptive automatic error correction: A method for adaptive automatic error and mismatch correction is disclosed for use with a system having an automatic error and mismatch correction learning module, an automatic error and mismatch correction model, and a classifier module. The learning module operates by receiving pairs of documents, identifying and selecting effective candidate...

20060235688 - System and method of providing telematically user-optimized configurable audio: A method of repeating a computer recognized string in a telematics unit in a vehicle, including receiving a user utterance at the telematics unit from a user, the user utterance including a plurality of words and a plurality of user pauses between the words, parsing the user utterance into a...

20060235690 - Intent-based information processing and updates: In various embodiments, a method for processing a user request is provided. The method may include receiving input data from a user including at least natural language associated with a user request; analyzing the user input data with an intermediary agent; selecting at least one form based on analyzing the...

20060235691 - Intent-based information processing and updates in association with a service agent: In various embodiments, a method for processing a request made by a requester is provided. The method may include receiving at least one request from at least one requester, the request being in the form of natural language; analyzing the request with an agent; selecting at least one form based...

20060235689 - Question answering system, data search method, and computer program: A question answering system includes a question input unit, a search unit, an answer candidate extraction unit, an answer candidate inspection unit and an answer output unit. The search unit executes search processing based on an input question. The answer candidate extraction unit extracts an initial answer candidate based on...

20060235692 - Bandwidth efficient digital voice communication system and method: A bandwidth efficient digital voice communication system (10) can include a speech-to-text converter (22) for converting a voice signal to a text representation, a speech parameter extractor (28) for extracting user identifiable parameters from a voice signal, and a text-to-speech converter (44) for converting the text representation and the user...

20060235693 - High speed imaging system: A system for imaging high speed moving objects, for example, using a scanning beam and beam delivery optics with fast signal processing. It can allow for vocal fold imaging at up to or exceeding approximately 1000 frames per second with grayscale resolution as high as about 100 micrometers or higher...

20060235694 - Integrating conversational speech into web browsers: A method of integrating conversational speech into a multimodal, Web-based processing model can include speech recognizing a user spoken utterance directed to a voice-enabled field of a multimodal markup language document presented within a browser. A statistical grammar can be used to determine a recognition result. The method further can...

20060235696 - Network based interactive speech recognition system: A network based interactive speech system responds in real-time to speech-based queries addressed to a set of topic entries. A best matching response is provided based on speech recognition processing and natural language processing performed on recognized speech utterances to identify a selected set of phrases related to the set...

20060235695 - Voice activated hypermedia systems using grammatical metadata: This is a voice activated Hypermedia system using grammatical metadata, the system comprising: a speech user agent; a browsing module; and an information resource. The system may include: embedded intelligence in hypermedia source; a means for processing the actions of a user based on the embedded intelligence; a means for...

20060235697 - On-line security management system: The Internet provides communication between a server and security officers, supervisors, client representatives, and a security system computer at a client site. On-line access to the server provides integration and management of security system functions such as maintenance of call lists and reports, shift management, and supervision of security officers....

20060235701 - Activity-based control of a set of electronic devices: A “reduced button count” remote control device controls a set of external electronic devices that, collectively, comprise an entertainment system such as a home theater. The remote control device is operable in conjunction with a processor-based subsystem that is programmable to respond to a spoken command phrase for selectively altering...

20060235698 - Apparatus for controlling a home theater system by speech commands: A “reduced button count” remote control device controls a set of external electronic devices that, collectively, comprise an entertainment system such as a home theater. The remote control device is operable in conjunction with a processor-based subsystem that is programmable to respond to a spoken command phrase for selectively altering...

20060235699 - Automating input when testing voice-enabled applications: A method for automating an input process during a testing of a voice-enabled application so that a tester is not required to manually respond to each prompt of the voice-enabled application. The method including the step of identifying a session input store that includes input data associated with voice-enabled application...

20060235700 - Processing files from a mobile device using voice commands: The presently described subject matter allows the user to interactively browse a collection of electronic files, such as a digital photo collection, remotely using voice activated mobile device. Files from the collection of electronic files can be displayed on the mobile device or they can be directed from the mobile...

20060235702 - Audio font output device, font database, and language input front end processor: An audio font output device is disclosed that is able to effectively convert characters or text into an audio signal recognizable by the acoustic sense of human beings. The audio font output device includes a font data base that stores a character corresponding to a symbol code or picture data...

20060229862 - Method and system for interpreting verbal inputs in multimodal dialog system: A method, a system and a computer program product for interpreting a verbal input in a multimodal dialog system are provided. The method includes assigning (302) a confidence value to at least one word generated by a verbal recognition component. The method further includes generating (304) a semantic unit confidence...

20060229863 - System for generating and selecting names: Methods and apparatus for implementing the generation of names. In one implementation, a system for generating a name includes: a user interface that receives user input including values for corresponding characteristics and name lengths; a rule dictionary that indicates one or more rules, each rule indicating a relationship between a...

20060229865 - Method and system for language identification: A method and system for language identification are provided. The system includes a feature set of a plurality of character strings of varying length with associated information. The associated information includes one or more significance scores for a character string for one or more of a plurality of languages. Means...

20060229864 - Method, device, and computer program product for multi-lingual speech recognition: A method of multi-lingual speech recognition can include determining whether characters in a word are in a source list of a language-specific alphabet mapping table for a language, converting each character not in the source list according to a general alphabet mapping table, converting each converted character according to the...

20060229866 - Apparatus and method for deterministically constructing a text question for application to a data source: A method of deterministically constructing a text question for application to a data source includes supplying a user with an initial text question. The user is allowed to alter a sentence component of the text question to form an altered sentence component. When the altered sentence component in combination with...

20060229867 - Apparatus and method for deterministically constructing multi-lingual text questions for application to a data source: A computer readable medium storing executable instructions to deterministically construct a text question for application to a data source includes executable instructions to allow a user to specify a second language different than a first language used as organizational schema of a data source. Language rules are loaded for the...

20060229868 - Method for estimating resonance frequencies: The present invention is related to a method for estimating from an input signal the resonance frequencies of a system modelled as a source and a filter, comprising the steps of—determining the Z-transform of the input signal,—calculating the differential-phase spectrum of the Z-transformed input signal, whereby the Z-transform is evaluated...

20060229869 - Method of and apparatus for reducing acoustic noise in wireless and landline based telephony: Acoustic noise for wireless or landline telephony is reduced using frequency domain of optimal filtering in which each frequency band of every time frame is filtered as a function of the estimated signal-two-noise ratio and the estimated total noise energy for the frame. Non-speech, non-speech frames and other special frames...

20060229870 - Using a spoken utterance for disambiguation of spelling inputs into a speech recognition system: A method of verifying a speech input can include determining pronunciation data for a received user spoken utterance specifying a word and speech recognizing further user spoken utterances specifying individual characters of the word. An N-best list can be generated for each character. Word candidates can be generated using the...

20060229871 - State output probability calculating method and apparatus for mixture distribution hmm: When adjacent times or the small change of an observation signal is determined, a distribution which maximizes the output probability of a mixture distribution does not change at a high possibility. By using this fact, when obtaining the output probability of the mixture distribution HMM, a distribution serving as a...

20060229873 - Methods and apparatus for adapting output speech in accordance with context of communication: A technique for producing speech output in an automatic dialog system is provided. Communication is received from a user at the automatic dialog system. A context of the communication from the user is detected in a context detector of the automatic dialog system. A message is provided to the user...

20060229872 - Methods and apparatus for conveying synthetic speech style from a text-to-speech system: A technique for producing speech output in a text-to-speech system is provided. A message is created for communication to a user in a natural language generator of the text-to-speech system. The message is annotated in the natural language generator with a synthetic speech output style. The message is conveyed to...

20060229874 - Speech synthesizer, speech synthesizing method, and computer program: A speech synthesizer includes a speech storage section for storing the speech of each of a plurality of speakers, a feature information storage section for storing speaker feature information which shows a feature as to the utterance of each of the speakers specified from speech, a reading feature designation section...

20060229875 - Speaker adaptive learning of resonance targets in a hidden trajectory model of speech coarticulation: A computer-implemented method is provided for training a hidden trajectory model, of a speech recognition system, which generates Vocal Tract Resonance (VTR) targets. The method includes obtaining generic VTR target parameters corresponding to a generic speaker used by a target selector to generate VTR target sequences. The generic VTR target...

20060229876 - Method, apparatus and computer program providing a multi-speaker database for concatenative text-to-speech synthesis: A method, apparatus and a computer program product to generate an audible speech word that corresponds to text. The method includes providing a text word and, in response to the text word, processing pre-recorded speech segments that are derived from a plurality of speakers to selectively concatenate together speech segments...

20060229877 - Memory usage in a text-to-speech system: In the concatenative text-to-speech system, high compression rate of duration data in the prosodic template is achieved by extracting statistical parameters describing behavior of actual duration values of instances of each given syllable, phoneme, half-phoneme, diphone, triphone or any other basic speech unit employed, and storing only the extracted statistical...

20060229879 - Voiceprint identification system for e-commerce: A voiceprint identification method for transacting e-commerce includes the steps of: accessing user's login via electronic communication means; an identification device recognizing a password; the identification device verifying voiceprint registration of users whether a voiceprint of the assessed user is registered; a voiceprint identification system identifying the assessed user's login...

20060229878 - Waveform recognition method and apparatus: A new method for extracting fingerprints from waveforms (e.g. musical signals) is disclosed, alosng with exemplary apparatus for doing same, all being particularly useful for recogizing waveforms. The new method is based on the principle of calculating features based on in-band frequency changes over time, in addition to the in-band...

20060229880 - Remote control of an appliance using a multimodal browser: A system, a method and machine readable storage for remotely controlling an appliance using multimodal access. The system can include a multimodal control device having a multimodal user interface, which receives at least one user input comprising a spoken utterance. The system also can include a wireless transmitter that propagates...

20060229881 - Voice recognition gateway apparatus: A voice recognition gateway apparatus includes a voice command receiving module, a voice identification module, a memory module, a voice guidance module, a command assigning module, and a wireless transmission module. The voice command receiving module is able to receive voice command signal, then to compare the voice command signal...

20060229882 - Method and system for modifying printed text to indicate the author's state of mind: A method and system for producing a printed text. A system operates in accordance with the method to: receive a message signal created by an author and representative of the semantic content of a printed text; produce a text signal in response to the message signal; analyze the message signal...

20060229883 - Methods and apparatus for providing push to talk text data: In the present technique of push to talk communications system, a push to talk audio data message is translated to text data to provide for a translated text data message. The push to talk audio data message is then associated with the corresponding translated text data message to provide for...

20060224378 - Communication support apparatus and computer program product for supporting communication by performing translation between languages: A communication support apparatus includes an analyzing unit that analyzes an source language sentence to be translated into a target language, and outputs at least one source language interpretation candidate which is a candidate for interpretation of the source language sentence; a detecting unit that, when there are a plurality...

20060224379 - Method of finding answers to questions: A method and a system for automatically finding one or more answers to a natural language question in a computer stored natural language text database is disclosed. The natural language text database has been analyzed with respect to syntactic functions of constituents, lexical meaning of word tokens and clause boundaries,...

20060224380 - Pitch pattern generating method and pitch pattern generating apparatus: A pitch pattern generating method includes preparing a memory to store a plurality of pitch patterns each extracted from natural speech, and pattern attribute information corresponding to the pitch patterns, inputting language attribute information obtained by analyzing a text including prosody control units, selecting, from the pitch patterns stored in...

20060224381 - Detecting speech frames belonging to a low energy sequence: In order to enable a detection of speech frames belonging to a low energy sequence of a speech signal, it is proposed that a speech energy in a current speech frame is determined. Further, a speech energy level is estimated based on a speech energy in a plurality of speech...

20060224382 - Noise reduction and audio-visual speech activity detection: A noise reduction system including an audio-visual user interface combines visual features extracted from a digital video sequence with audio features extracted from an analog audio sequence. The digital video sequence may show the face of a speaker, and the analog audio sequence may include background noise in an environment...

20060224383 - Speech processing apparatus, medium, and method recognizing and responding to speech: A speech processing apparatus, medium, and method recognizing speech and responding to the speech. The speech processing apparatus may includes an entity extracting unit which extracts entity information and an upper entity corresponding to the entity information from input speech, a focus determination unit which determines a focus using the...

20060224384 - System and method for automatic speech recognition: A system and method for automatic recognition of foreign speakers by performing analysis of a speech sample to produce a signal representative thereof and attempting to match the representative signal to one of a plurality of predetermined sounds to produce recognition; and determining whether a gap exists in a table...

20060224386 - Text information display apparatus equipped with speech synthesis function, speech synthesis method of same, and speech synthesis program: A text information display apparatus equipped with a speech synthesis function able to clearly display a linked portion by speech and enabling easy recognition of a change from a link, provided with a controller for referring to the display rules of text to be converted to speech when converting text...

20060224385 - Text-to-speech conversion in electronic device field: A solution for text-to-speech conversion is provided. According to the solution, it is checked whether or not a character string comprises a character combination which does not represent a word. If the character string comprises a character combination which does not represent a word, the function of the character combination...

20060224387 - Non-intrusive speech-quality assessment: Non-intrusive speech-quality assessment uses vocal-tract models, in particular for testing telecommunications systems and equipment. This process requires reduction of the speech stream under assessment into a set of parameters that are sensitive to the types of distortion to be assessed. Once parameterized, the data is used to generate a set...

20060224388 - Apparatus and method for concealing erased periodic signal data: Circuitry and a method compensate the erasure of speech signal data or similar periodic signal data, by substitution using past periodic signal data input. After a predetermined number of latest periodic signal data have been saved, whether or not an erasure occurs is determined with every periodic signal data sequence,...

20060224389 - Code conversion method and device, program, and recording medium: An audio decoding device (1) generates a first decoded audio from a first code string by a first decoding method, AN audio encoding device (2) judges whether the first decoded audio is an audio signal or a non-audio signal by using the information contained in the first code string and...

20060224391 - Speech synthesis system and method: A speech synthesis system in a preferred embodiment includes a speech unit storage section, a phonetic environment storage section, a phonetic sequence/prosodic information input section, a plural-speech-unit selection section, a fused-speech-unit sequence generation section, and a fused-speech-unit modification/concatenation section. By fusing a plurality of selected speech units in the fused...

20060224390 - System, method, and apparatus for audio decoding accelerator: Presented herein are system(s), method(s), and apparatus for an audio decoding accelerator. In one embodiment, there is presented an audio decoder for decoding audio data. The audio decoder comprises a controller and a computation engine. The controller receives the audio data, and provides parameters, where the parameters are associated with...

20060224392 - Test harness for a speech server: One aspect of the present invention relates to simulating an interaction between a client and a server. A session is established between the client and the server to conduct a test. Testing data is transmitted from the client to the server. The server processes the testing data and provides an...