Computerization of African languages-French dictionaries

This paper relates work done during the DiLAF project. It consists in converting 5 bilingual African language-French dictionaries originally in Word format into XML following the LMF model. The languages processed are Bambara, Hausa, Kanuri, Tamajaq and Songhai-zarma, still considered as under-resourced languages concerning Natural Language Processing tools. Once converted, the dictionaries are available online on the Jibiki platform for lookup and modification. The DiLAF project is first presented. A description of each dictionary follows. Then, the conversion methodology from .doc format to XML files is presented. A specific point on the usage of Unicode follows. Then, each step of the conversion into XML and LMF is detailed. The last part presents the Jibiki lexical resources management platform used for the project.Comment: 8 page

Basque and Spanish Multilingual TTS Model for Speech-to-Speech Translation

[EN] Lately, multiple Text-to-Speech models have emerged using Deep Neural networks to synthesize audio from text. In this work, the state-of-the-art multilingual and multi-speaker Text-to-Speech model has been trained in Basque, Spanish, Catalan, and Galician. The research consisted of gathering the datasets, pre-processing their audio and text data, training the model in the languages in different steps, and evaluating the results at each point. For the training step, a transfer learning approach has been used from a model already trained in three languages: English, Portuguese, and French. Therefore, the final model created here supports a total of seven languages. Moreover, these models also support zero-shot voice conversion, using an input audio file as a reference. Finally, a prototype application has been created to do Speech-to-Speech Translation, putting together the models trained here and other models from the community. Along the way, some Deep Speech Speech-to-Text models have been generated for Basque and Galician.[EU] Azkenaldian, Text-to-Speech eredu anitz sortu dira sare neuronal sakonak erabiliz, testutik audioa sintetizatzeko. Lan honetan, state-of-the-art Text-to-Speech eredu eleaniztun eta hiztun anitzeko eredua landu da euskaraz, gaztelaniaz, katalanez eta galegoz. Ikerketa honetan datu-multzoak bildu, haien audio- eta testu-datuak aldez aurretik prozesatu, eredua hizkuntzetan entrenatu da urrats desberdinetan eta emaitzak puntu bakoitzean ebaluatu dira. Entrenatze-urratserako, ikaskuntza-transferentzia teknika erabili da dagoeneko hiru hizkuntzatan trebatutako eredu batetik abiatuta: ingelesa, portugesa eta frantsesa. Beraz, hemen sortutako azken ereduak zazpi hizkuntza onartzen ditu guztira. Gainera, eredu hauek zero-shot ahots bihurketa ere egiten dute, sarrerako audio fitxategi bat erreferentzia gisa erabiliz. Azkenik, Speech-to-Speech Translation egiteko prototipo aplikazio bat sortu da hemen entrenatutako ereduak eta komunitateko beste eredu batzuk elkartuz. Bide horretan, Deep Speech Speech-to-Text eredu batzuk sortu dira euskararako eta galegorako

A Correlational Encoder Decoder Architecture for Pivot Based Sequence Generation

Interlingua based Machine Translation (MT) aims to encode multiple languages into a common linguistic representation and then decode sentences in multiple target languages from this representation. In this work we explore this idea in the context of neural encoder decoder architectures, albeit on a smaller scale and without MT as the end goal. Specifically, we consider the case of three languages or modalities X, Z and Y wherein we are interested in generating sequences in Y starting from information available in X. However, there is no parallel training data available between X and Y but, training data is available between X & Z and Z & Y (as is often the case in many real world applications). Z thus acts as a pivot/bridge. An obvious solution, which is perhaps less elegant but works very well in practice is to train a two stage model which first converts from X to Z and then from Z to Y. Instead we explore an interlingua inspired solution which jointly learns to do the following (i) encode X and Z to a common representation and (ii) decode Y from this common representation. We evaluate our model on two tasks: (i) bridge transliteration and (ii) bridge captioning. We report promising results in both these applications and believe that this is a right step towards truly interlingua inspired encoder decoder architectures.Comment: 10 page