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Embedded Software and Operating Systems
News Release from: NEC Electronics (Europe) | Subject: Speech translation software
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 25 October 2005
Translation software runs on handset
processor
NEC has developed Japanese-English/English-Japanese automatic speech translation software for single-chip multicore processors for small devices such as mobile phones.
NEC has developed Japanese-English/English-Japanese automatic speech translation software for single-chip multicore processors for small devices such as mobile phones, capable of operation at high speeds with low power consumption NEC verified the high-speed automatic speech translation processing capability of this software on the NEC Electronics MP211 application processor for mobile phones, at an operating frequency of 200MHz, proving that operation of interpretation applications is technologically feasible on small devices like mobile phones
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 16 May 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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Supporting a 50,000-word rich vocabulary, this software realises automatic speech-to-speech interpretation of travel conversation through the development of a new parallel speech recognition method for single-chip processors with several CPU cores, and a compact, lexical-rule-based, machine translation engine that unites dictionaries with grammar that is operable on small devices.
The software includes a parallel, large-vocabulary, continuous speech recognition engine, which is built with a database consisting of a wide-range of conversation sounds and words that enables accurate speech recognition of spoken words.
It also incorporates a lexical-rule-based, machine translation engine, which achieves high-performance translation of spoken words using dictionaries and grammar compiled from a wide range of language knowledge data.
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There is also an advanced wave-concatenative speech synthesis engine, which realises high-performance reading through an advanced wave-concatenative speech synthesis method based on a wide-range of speech data.
The software also incorporates a total integration module that controls collaborative operation of the speech recognition engine, the machine translation engine, and the speech synthesis engine realising automatic translation on a single processor for mobile phones.
With the advancement of an information society and increased freedom of movement across borders, the dynamic development of technology supporting automatic speech interpretation and translation to support communication between different languages is rapidly progressing.
NEC's developments in this area include: automatic Japanese-English/English-Japanese translation software for notebook PCs in 1999; the commercial launch of Tabitsu (American English version) communication software supporting English travel conversation, in 2001; and PDA-operational Japanese-English travel conversation, automatic speech translation software in 2002.
The next natural development for NEC was to expand this technology to small, light-weight portable devices that can be used anytime, anywhere.
However, in order to achieve this goal it was necessary to realise large CPU power, required for speech recognition, and machine translation technology for interpretation, which are both exceedingly difficult to achieve on low-power multicore processors for small devices such as mobile phones.
NEC has accomplished this development through the synthesis of its proprietary parallel speech recognition technology and its compact machine translation technology with its multi-core processor technology.
NEC will continue to advance research of its speech recognition and language processing technologies toward the realisation of a society where communication is possible anytime, anywhere.
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