Intelligent speech for information systems: towards biliteracy and trilingualism

✍ Scribed by Helen M Meng; Steven Lee; Carmen Wai

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 303 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0953-5438
• DOI: 10.1016/s0953-5438(02)00006-1

✦ Synopsis

We are developing a human±computer spoken language system capable of processing English, Cantonese and Putonghua (two dialects of Chinese). Such biliteracy and trilingualism characterize Hong Kong's language environment. Users can simply converse with the system to access real-time information in the foreign exchange domain. The system supports user calls with ®xed-line as well as cellular phones, both of which have high penetration in Hong Kong. As such, we strive towards universal usability in developing speech and language interface technologies by (i) supporting multiple languages for user diversity; (ii) requiring no specialized training for system usage to avoid user knowledge gaps; and (iii) supporting device variety in telephone-based information access.