Reducing speech recognition time and memory use by means of compound (de-)composition

This paper tackles the problem of Out Of Vocabulary words in Automatic Speech Transcription applications for a compound language (Dutch). A seemingly attractive way to reduce the amount of OOV words in compound languages is to extend the AST system with a compound (de-)composition module. However, thus far, successful implementations of this approach are rather scarce. We developed a novel data driven compound (de-)composition module and tested it in two different AST experiments. For equal lexicon sizes, we see that our compound processor lowers the OOV rate. Moreover we are able to transform that gain in OOV rate into a reduction of the Word Error Rate of the transcription system. Using our approach we built a system with an 84K lexicon that performs as accurately as a baseline system with a 168K lexicon, but our system is 5-6% faster and requires about 50% less storage for the lexical component, even though this component is encoded in an optimal way (prefix-suffix tree compression)

Language modeling and transcription of the TED corpus lectures

Transcribing lectures is a challenging task, both in acoustic and in language modeling. In this work, we present our first results on the automatic transcription of lectures from the TED corpus, recently released by ELRA and LDC. In particular, we concentrated our effort on language modeling. Baseline acoustic and language models were developed using respectively 8 hours of TED transcripts and various types of texts: conference proceedings, lecture transcripts, and conversational speech transcripts. Then, adaptation of the language model to single speakers was investigated by exploiting different kinds of information: automatic transcripts of the talk, the title of the talk, the abstract and, finally, the paper. In the last case, a 39.2% WER was achieved

Spoken content retrieval: A survey of techniques and technologies

Speech media, that is, digital audio and video containing spoken content, has blossomed in recent years. Large collections are accruing on the Internet as well as in private and enterprise settings. This growth has motivated extensive research on techniques and technologies that facilitate reliable indexing and retrieval. Spoken content retrieval (SCR) requires the combination of audio and speech processing technologies with methods from information retrieval (IR). SCR research initially investigated planned speech structured in document-like units, but has subsequently shifted focus to more informal spoken content produced spontaneously, outside of the studio and in conversational settings. This survey provides an overview of the field of SCR encompassing component technologies, the relationship of SCR to text IR and automatic speech recognition and user interaction issues. It is aimed at researchers with backgrounds in speech technology or IR who are seeking deeper insight on how these fields are integrated to support research and development, thus addressing the core challenges of SCR

User requirement elicitation for cross-language information retrieval

Who are the users of a cross-language retrieval system? Under what circumstances do they need to perform such multi-language searches? How will the task and the context of use affect successful interaction with the system? Answers to these questions were explored in a user study performed as part of the design stages of Clarity, a EU founded project on cross-language information retrieval. The findings resulted in a rethink of the planned user interface and a consequent expansion of the set of services offered. This paper reports on the methodology and techniques used for the elicitation of user requirements as well as how these were in turn transformed into new design solutions

Multimedia information technology and the annotation of video

The state of the art in multimedia information technology has not progressed to the point where a single solution is available to meet all reasonable needs of documentalists and users of video archives. In general, we do not have an optimistic view of the usability of new technology in this domain, but digitization and digital power can be expected to cause a small revolution in the area of video archiving. The volume of data leads to two views of the future: on the pessimistic side, overload of data will cause lack of annotation capacity, and on the optimistic side, there will be enough data from which to learn selected concepts that can be deployed to support automatic annotation. At the threshold of this interesting era, we make an attempt to describe the state of the art in technology. We sample the progress in text, sound, and image processing, as well as in machine learning

Beyond English text: Multilingual and multimedia information retrieval.

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CITIZENS AND INSTITUTIONS BETWEEN COMPUTERS AND INTERNET - AN EMPYRICAL EVIDENCE FROM THE ITALIAN CASE

The diffusion of ICT technologies that generated the Internet phenomenon, is responsible of the world-wide incredible expectation level related to its high potential contribution to problem solution in many socio-economic sectors. In facts, the contribution of ICT in some sectors, as organizations management (public or private, profit or no-profit), was undoubtedly highly effective. The interaction between citizens and institutions is also considered extremely interesting, as the specific funds appropriation since the end of 90es of European Union on these topics can demonstrate. This wide interest caused the expectation of a remarkable services improvement, but the obtained results doesn’t seem as much satisfactory. This international and European scenario had a meaningful reflex also in Italian case, because the lack of information flows between Institutions and citizens in our country is always strongly perceived as critical point. In a former study of 1998 (Tesauro, Campisi), some institutional web sites was included in a wider study sample about the usage of internet communications, reaching unflattering results. Nevertheless, some recent “accidents” in citizen-institution relationships, widely reported by mass media and strictly related to computer technologies, suggest remarkable doubts about the usage of these technologies. This happen in spite of the creation of a specific Ministry in Italy and five years later the cited study, an incredible amount of time in terms of evolutionary dynamic of virtual environment). So, the main objective of this contribution is to show a scenario of citizen-institution relation via Internet in Italy at different scales (national, regional and local), identifying strength or weak points not only from users viewpoint and trying to underline the difficulties inherited from a poor usage of actual computer knowledge.