Voice Recognition and Speech Synthesis

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Voice recognition and speech synthesis capabilities will most likely be found on specialized ULSI (ultra large scale integration) chips.  Language and cultural context databases may also be found on specialized chips.  The challenge is not creating spoken words since such capability has existed for many years.  The real challenge is converting thoughts into conversational speech. Each language and dialect has its own peculiarities, so a single thought might be represented (converted) into speech in different ways.

One challenge for voice recognition and speech synthesis is language translation.  Again, it is not possible to convert from one language to another by simply translating word by word.  Babel Fish and other online translators are well-known for their limitations.  It is necessary to understand how thoughts are represented in each language, choosing the correct words to express properly the translated thought.

Remember a well-intentioned politician who wanted to express solidarity in his speech by saying “Ich bin ein Berliner!”? [ 26 June 1963 – West Berlin — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjHcNhcahv4 ]  He wanted to identify himself as a “citizen of Berlin”, but some believe he actually called himself “a jelly donut (like the ones made in Berlin)”.  If he had left out the word “ein”, there would have been much less confusion.  So it is with computer-based language translation. Translation is not as important as understanding usage and context of each language involved.