1. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Chinese Romanization for Chinese Voice Browsing IBM China Research Lab

2. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Index Motivations & Proposals IPA. VS. Chinese Romanization Chinese Romanization Standards Implementations of Chinese Romanization in SSML Extensions for other languages

3. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Motivations & Proposals

4. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation IBM Speech Synthesis System IBM speech synthesis system support about 20 languages. For Asian Language, we cover: –Mandarine, –Cantonese, –Korean, –Japanese, –Thai.

5. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Pronunciations Annotations are important for Chinese A Chinese character represents a meaning more than a pronunciation. The homograph phenomenon is very common for Chinese characters. So it will be very helpful if the pronunciation can be given explicitly.

6. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Proposals We propose to use Chinese Romanization to annotate Chinese pronunciation in “phoneme” element. We also propose SSML to use diverse predefined and widely used pronunciation annotation standards for different languages. Thus SSML can be more easily accepted and used around the world. Note: Chinese Romanization = Hanyu Pinyin in this PPT.

7. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation IPA. VS. Chinese Romanization

8. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Comparison Rule: Goal of SSML The goal of SSML is to “provide a rich, XML-based markup language for assisting the generation of synthetic speech in Web and other applications”. To reach the goal, we need more and more users of SSML, such as ordinary Web applications developers, to learn and use the SSML easily. So, we need to define the SSML based on ordinary people’s knowledge and skill rather than professional linguistics’ knowledge. –Otherwise, it will be a long way for SSML be widely accepted and used around the world.

9. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation IPA is not very fit for Chinese IPA tries to collect an exhaustive set of pronunciations for all kinds of languages. –It has become very complicated and difficult to input. A well educated Chinese adult can not annotate Chinese Pronunciation in IPA without special training. –IPA is not very popular in China. Special linguistic phenomena in Chinese, such as tone, retroflex, can not be conveniently described by IPA.

10. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Chinese Romanization is fit for Chinese Chinese Romanization is specially designed only for Chinese instead of all languages. –Adding ‘r’ in the end to describe a “retroflex” syllable. –Adding ‘tone’ attribute to describe the tone. Chinese Romanization is widely used and learnt. –Chinese people learn Chinese Romanization in primary school. –Many foreigners begin to learn Chinese by Chinese Romanization. –Chinese Romanization is widely used to input Chinese Characters on computer. Chinese government has brought into effect a standard for Chinese Romanization. –It is in effect for education, publishing, information processing and other related industries in China.

11. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Chinese Romanization Standards

12. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Chinese Romanization Standard The writing rules of Chinese Romanization conform to P.R.C state standard “Basic rules for Hanyu Pinyin Orthography” [1] published by (CSBQTS) in 1996. This Orthography is based on “Hanyu Pinyin Schema” published in 1958. According to the naming method of alphabet, we propose to use “x-CSBQTS-96” to represent Chinese Romanization alphabet. However, we also propose to use “x-Pinyin-96”, which is easier to remember. * CSBQTS: China State Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision

13. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Hanyu Pinyin Schema (published in 1958) Character Set. –25 characters, all from ‘a’ to ‘z’ except ‘ü’. –(For easy to input on computer: ü is replaced by v.) Initial Set: –b, p m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s Final Set: –i, u, ü, a, ia, ua, o, uo, e, ie, eü, ai, uai, ei, uei, –ao, iao, ou, iou, an, ian, uan, üan, en, in, uen, ün –ang, iang, uang, eng, ing, ueng, ong, iong, Tone Annotation: –mā, má, mǎ, mà, ma Separator: ' –pi’ao

14. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Pinyin VS. IPA

15. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Basic rules for Hanyu Pinyin Orthography (published in 1996) 1. Words are the basic units for spelling the Chinese Common Language. (Space is used to separate Word) –rén (person/people), péngyou (friend[s]), túshūguǎn (library/libraries) –wǒrén hé nóngmín (Workers and Farmers) 2. Structures of two or three syllables that indicate a complete concept are linked: –quánguó (the whole nation), duìbuqǐ (sorry), 3. Separate terms with more than 4 syllables if they can be separated into words, otherwise link all the syllables: –wúfèng gāngbǐ (seamless pen), Hóngshízìhuì (Red Cross)

16. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Basic rules for Hanyu Pinyin Orthography (published in 1996) 4. Reduplicated monosyllabic words are linked, but reduplicated disyllabic words are separated: –rénrén (everybody), chángshi chángshi (give it a try) 5. In certain situations, for the purpose of making it convenient to read and understand the words, a hyphen can be added: –huán-bǎo (environmental protection), shíqī-bā suì (17 or 18 years old)

17. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Implementations of Chinese Romanization in SSML

18. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Implementation 1 <speak version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/synthesis.xsd" xml:lang="zh-CH"> 对不起 <!-- This is an example of Chinese Romanization Standard Tone Annotation-->

19. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Implementation 2 <speak version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/synthesis.xsd" xml:lang="zh-CH"> 对不起 <!-- This is an example of Chinese Romanization using number to describe tone -->

20. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Comparison between Two implementations Implementation 1: 对不起 Implementation 2: 对不起 Note: "x-CSBQTS-96" may be replaced by "x-Pinyin-96"

21. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Extensions for other languages

22. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Extension for Cantonese The Linguistic society of Hong Kong has published a simple, easy-to-learn and easy-to-use “LSHK Cantonese Romanization Scheme” in 1993. This scheme is widely adopted in various areas: education, Cantonese information process and computer input method, etc. So we also propose to use “The LSHK Cantonese Romanization Scheme” to annotate Cantonese pronunciation.

23. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Extension for more languages Though it is possible to form up a general standard to annotate all languages’ pronunciation, such a standard may become very complex to use. Another way is to use the predefined and widely accepted pronunciation annotation standards for different language. At least, these diverse standards should be an important complement to the general standard.

24. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Thank you!

25. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Korea Romanization KoreaKorea RomanizationMeaning in English 밥 paprice 불고기 pul go gibroiled beef 갈비찜 kal bi jjimbeef rib stew 만두 man tudumplings 홍차 hong ch\'a tea 콜라 k\'ol lacola 우유 u yu milk It is used in our Korea Speech Synthesis System.

26. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Japanese Romanization Japanese: – まだ覚えているでしょう 波音に包まれて Japanese Romanization: –mada oboeteiru deshou nami oto ni tsutsumarete English meaning: –Do you remember being surrounded by the sound of tide?

27. CRL Speech Team © 2003 IBM Corporation Discussion of “Word” What is the definition of “Word” in Chinese? –Prosodic Word or Grammar Word 你来还是不来？ nǐ lái háishi bù lái? Is “ 不来 ” a word? What is the difference between ‘Word’ & ‘break’? –The misunderstanding problem can be solved by adding ‘break’. Can Word information be handled by ‘Hanyu Pinyin Orthography ’? –In ‘Hanyu Pinyin Orthography ’, space is used to separate words.