ISCA Archive Interspeech 2015
ISCA Archive Interspeech 2015

Tools for rapid customization of S2s systems for emergent domains

Rohit Kumar, Matthew E. Roy, Sanjika Hewavitharana, Dennis N. Mehay, Nina Zinovieva

Component models of speech-to-speech translation (S2S) systems need to be customized to emerging needs. In this demonstration, we will showcase the technical functionality of BBN's domain customization tools for S2S systems that allow subject matter experts to augment an existing S2S system with new vocabulary items and translation rules using a web-based user interface. To reduce the user effort and time, our tools leverage Wikipedia as a linguistic resource for enrichment of domain profiles by finding lexical items and translations related to the domain. In a recent evaluation of BBN S2S system customized for using these tools, we found 15% (relative) reduction in word error rate as well as 30% (relative) reduction in untranslatable words when used within customized conversational domains.