TA3 and AT&T Natural Dictionary

[PHenry1026]

TA3 is not recognizing or pulling definitions from AT&T Natural Dictionary correctly. AT&T Natural Dictionary
allows for case sensitivity, with most of its entries. For example,

Word: Mr.
Phonemes: m ih s 1 t er 0 (phoneme for mister)


Word: MR.
Phonemes: eh m aa r 1 (phoneme for MR)

When TA2 pulls a definition from AT&T Natural Dictionary it recognizes case sensitivity. TA3 does not and would pronounce Mr. as M R using phoneme (eh m aa r 1)

Percy Henry

[Jim Bretti]

This is a tricky one, it looks like there are a couple things going on.

First, TextAloud 2 internally converts words that are all uppercase to lowercase. We did this because it helped some voices with words being mispronounced, but we have completely avoided this kind of thing in TA3. Our approach in TA3 is to see where these kinds of problems come up, and handle with voice and/or vendor specific dictionary fixes.

So TextAloud 2 actually translates "MR." to "mr." before sending text to the speech engine. TextAloud 3 does not perform the translation.

In an AT&T dictionary, I defined phoneme translations for "MR" and "mr" ... my results were as follows:

TextAloud 2
1. Text MR matches AT&T entry for mr
2. Text mr matches AT&T entry for mr
3. Text Mr matches AT&T entry for MR

TextAloud 3
4. Text MR matches AT&T entry for MR
5. Text mr matches AT&T entry for mr
6. Text Mr matches AT&T entry for MR

So (1) and (2) mean that the text MR is treated the same as mr, because of the TA2 upper to lower case conversion.

(3) and (6) don't seem to make sense, but that is how the match in AT&T seems to be working. In both cases the text "Mr" is matching the entry I created for "MR".

So in your example where TA3 pronounces Mr. as M R, it seems like you're seeing the same mixed case match I'm seeing in cases (3) and (6).

Does that help at all ?

[PHenry1026]

Jim,

Thanks for your response, unfortunately I am unable to duplicate your results.

In the AT&T dictionary, I defined phoneme translations for "MR" and "mr" as follows:

1. MR (eh m aa r 1 )

2. mr (eh m aa r 1 )

3. Mr (m ih s 1 t er 0 )

4. Mr. (m ih s 1 t er 0 ) mixed case with period [\.]

TextAloud 2

For me (3) Mr matches the phoneme translation (m ih s 1 t er 0 ) in TA2.


For me (1) MR matches the phoneme translation (eh m aa r 1 ) in TA2.


For me (2) mr matches the phoneme translation (eh m aa r 1 ) in TA2.

For me (4) Mr. matches the phoneme translation (m ih s 1 t er 0 ) in TA2.


TextAloud 3

For me (3) Mr matches the phoneme translation (m ih s 1 t er 0 ) in TA3.

For me (4) Mr. matches the phoneme translation (eh m aa r 1 ) in TA3.


Percy Henry

[Jim Bretti]

Percy,

So it looks like the entry containing the period ("Mr.") is not consistent between TA2 and TA3?

Can you mail me your AT&T dictionary, along with a sample of text you're using to test? Send it to jim@nextup.com

Thanks
Jim