A text-to-speech system and method

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(11)

EP 1 638 080 A3

(12)	EUROPEAN PATENT APPLICATION

(88)	Date of publication A3:
	26.07.2006 Bulletin 2006/30

(43)	Date of publication A2:
	22.03.2006 Bulletin 2006/12

(21)	Application number: 05107389.8

(22)	Date of filing: 11.08.2005

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International Patent Classification (IPC):

G10L 13/08^(2006.01)

(84)	Designated Contracting States:
	AT BE BG CH CY CZ DE DK EE ES FI FR GB GR HU IE IS IT LI LT LU LV MC NL PL PT RO SE SI SK TR
	Designated Extension States:
	AL BA HR MK YU

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Priority:

11.08.2004 EP 04300531

(71)	Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
	Armonk, N.Y. 10504 (US)

(72)	Inventors:
	Amato, Christel 78550 Bazainville (FR) Crepy, Hubert 92100 Boulogne (FR) Revelin, Stephane 94160 Saint Mande (FR) Waast-Richard, Claire 78140 Velizy-Villacoublay (FR)

(74)	Representative: de Pena, Alain et al
	IBM France Intellectual Property Dept. Le Plan du bois 06610 La Gaude 06610 La Gaude (FR)

(54)	A text-to-speech system and method

(57) A system and method for generating synthetic speech is disclosed. The invention operates in a computer implemented Text-To-Speech system comprising at least a speaker database that has been previously created from user recordings, a Front-End system to receive an input text and a Text-To-Speech engine. Particularly, the Front-End system generates multiple phonetic transcriptions for each word of the input text, and the TTS engine is using a cost function to select which phonetic transcription is the more appropriate for searching the speech segments within the speaker database to be concatenated and synthesized.

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