Recent improvements in BBN's English/Iraqi speech-to-speech translation system

Abstract

We report on recent improvements in our English/Iraqi Arabic speech-to-speech translation system. User interface improvements include a novel parallel approach to user confirmation which makes confirmation cost-free in terms of dialog duration. Automatic speech recognition improvements include the incorporation of state-of-the-art techniques in feature transformation and discriminative training. Machine translation improvements include a novel combination of multiple alignments derived from various pre-processing techniques, such as Arabic segmentation and English word compounding, higher order N-grams for target language model, and use of context in form of semantic classes and Part-of-Speech tags.

The Challenges of Developing a Living Arabic Phonetic Dictionary for Speech Recognition System: A Literature Review

“…The result showed that the polynomial classifier provided better recognition performance with a faster testing response compared to the DTW recognizer. Additionally, recent developments to English/Iraqi Arabic speech-to-speech translation system were provided in literature (Choi et al, 2008). The system provided wide developments involving machine translation (MT), components dialog manager, user interface (UI), and Arabic Speech Recognition (ASR).…”

Cross-Word Arabic Pronunciation Variation Modeling Using Part of Speech Tagging

“…(Alotaibi, 2004) reported achieving highperformance Arabic digits recognition using recurrent networks. (Choi et al, 2008) presented recent improvements to their English/Iraqi Arabic speech-to-speech translation system. The presented system-wide improvements included user interface, dialog manager, ASR, and machine translation components.…”