The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 29, 2003
Filed:
Mar. 16, 2000
Raimo Bakis, Briarcliff Manor, NY (US);
Mark Edward Epstein, Katonah, NY (US);
William Stuart Meisel, Tarzana, CA (US);
Miroslav Novak, Mohegan Lake, NY (US);
Michael Picheny, White Plains, NY (US);
Ridley M. Whitaker, Katonah, NY (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A multi-lingual time-synchronized translation system and method provide automatic time-synchronized spoken translations of spoken phrases. The multi-lingual time-synchronized translation system includes a phrase-spotting mechanism, optionally, a language understanding mechanism, a translation mechanism, a speech output mechanism and an event measuring mechanism. The phrase-spotting mechanism identifies a spoken phrase from a restricted domain of phrases. The language understanding mechanism, if present, maps the identified phrase onto a small set of formal phrases. The translation mechanism maps the formal phrase onto a well-formed phrase in one or more target languages. The speech output mechanism produces high-quality output speech using the output of the event measuring mechanism for time synchronization. The event-measuring mechanism measures the duration of various key events in the source phrase. Event duration could be, for example, the overall duration of the input phrase, the duration of the phrase with interword silences omitted, or some other relevant durational features. The present invention recognizes the quality improvements can be achieved by restricting the task domain under consideration.