Author Archives: mashael

Arabic Speech Regonition

Available Commercial Arabic ASRs:
1. Sakar ASR:
A promising software that emerged from an experienced background that involved various technical solutions which are concerned on serving Arabic-based applications. In fact, they have claimed that their ASR doesn’t require training.
http://international.sakhr.com/arabic-speech-recognition-and-arabic-TTS.html

Sakar’s Client:
• USA national departments such as Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice
• European Commission
• Government of Canada

* An interesting point is that Sakar has a partnership with Carnige Melon University who is the developer of Sphinx open-source ASR


2. Emerging Technologies ASR:
Deals with dialects & accents because of Nawaz company engine (75% of market share)
The company provide ASR, text-to-speech, and voice verification.
http://www.em-t.com/Arabic-Voice-Recognition-Solutions-s/54.htm
Features:
Supports voice-commands (Such in "Sama’ni" service in STC [KSA]
User independent recognition model (no user intervention)
Client:
Middle East : Saudi Telecom Company (STC) [KSA] , Dubia Airport & Etisalat Telecom Company [UAE], Kuwait finance house [KTW]
. Dubia Airport as a case study showed that the ASR caused the reduction of live agents at call centers


Both ASRs support diverse accents and dialects

3. IBM viavoice Arabic:
Firstly, through researching the internet I didn’t found any official link for the Arabic version. Even though, I’ve found many copies of the Arabic version of IBM viavoice engine for download in the Arabic content. Moreover, one of the sites has cited that these versions were a previous support from IBM viavoice which doesn’t exist anymore.
On the other hand, IBM is working with King Abdulaziz City for Technology & Science (KACTS):
to develop an Arabic ASR for technical use & voice verification

http://ceri.kacst.edu.sa/English/Speech_Recognition_for_telephony_applications.html
They offer a Saudi accented Arabic speech database for researchers & commercial use. (http://www.mghamdi.com/SAAVB_Athens.pdf


4. AppTek ASR:
Especially integrated within a system for news broadcasting
Offers more products than only speech recognition to include services such as data mining and much more
http://aramedia.com/speechtrans.htm
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/AppTek-Releases-Arabic-Farsi-Pashto-Urdu-Language-Engines-Its-Hybrid-Machine-Translation-1279485.htm


5. VOCAPIA Speech Recognizer API:
http://www.vocapia.com/technos.html


6. Voice-to-text API (Cloud, supports Arabic )
http://www.voicecloud.com/hk/
7. Votek:
an Arabic based speech recognizer, specialized in dealing with various dialects

http://www.votek-group.com/

Arabic ASR

Hello,

The only open-source Arabic ASR that is found up to now is “Arabisc” which was developed by Dr. Hussein Hiyassat et. al

Here is the download link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/arabisc/ (Gives an error at run-time)
But I’m still trying to contact the developer for a full access to the system to download if available.

Here is a full description of their work : http://www.springerlink.com/content/n3658k1758140266/