Skip to main content

Automatic Speech Recognition for Kreol Morisien: A Case Study for the Health Domain

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Speech and Computer (SPECOM 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11658))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) has revolutionized human-machine interactions as it allows the use of speech as an input modality. Speech is easy, natural and it is a skill that most people possess in their respective languages. Therefore, speech technology contributes to the usability and inclusivity of applications. ASR in languages such as English is extensively developed as there are large amounts of relevant resources available such as audio or transcribed data. For languages which are under-resourced, such as Kreol Morisien, ASR is a monumental task. In this paper, an attempt at developing an ASR system in Kreol Morisien is described. The ASR system was developed for the health domain to enable the automatic recognition of medical symptoms in spoken Kreol. The data collection process included the manual creation of a list of 848 symptoms along with 4000 audio files. Using the created corpus, the acoustic model for Kreol recognition was built and trained. This paper also describes a user evaluation which was conducted in different environments. Findings showed that the accuracy of the acoustic model was mainly affected by the level of noise. The gender of the speaker and the pronunciation style (depending on the region where the speaker originates from) did not cause any significant difference in the performance of the acoustic model.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.ethnologue.com.

  2. 2.

    https://www.audacityteam.org/.

  3. 3.

    www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/tools/lmtool.html.

  4. 4.

    https://cmusphinx.github.io.

  5. 5.

    https://github.com/belambert/asr-evaluation.

References

  1. Yu, D., Deng, L.: Automatic Speech Recognition. Springer, London (2016)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. De Vries, N.J., et al.: A smartphone-based ASR data collection tool for under-resourced languages. Speech Commun. 56, 119–131 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Neerincx, M.A., Cremers, A.H., Kessens, J.M., Van Leeuwen, D.A., Truong, K.P.: Attuning speech-enabled interfaces to user and context for inclusive design: technology, methodology and practice. Univ. Access Inf. Soc. 8(2), 109–122 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Lamel, L., Gauvain, J.L., Adda, G.: Lightly supervised and unsupervised acoustic model training. Comput. Speech Lang. 16(1), 115–129 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Noormamode, W., Gobin-Rahimbux, B., Peerboccus, M.: A speech engine for Mauritian Creole. In: Satapathy, S.C., Bhateja, V., Somanah, R., Yang, X.-S., Senkerik, R. (eds.) Information Systems Design and Intelligent Applications. AISC, vol. 863, pp. 389–398. Springer, Singapore (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3338-5_36

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Aubeeluck, M., Bucktowar, U., Gooda Sahib-Kaudeer, N., Gobin-Rahimbux, B.: A smart mobile health application for mauritius. In: Satapathy, S.C., Bhateja, V., Somanah, R., Yang, X.-S., Senkerik, R. (eds.) Information Systems Design and Intelligent Applications. AISC, vol. 863, pp. 333–343. Springer, Singapore (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3338-5_31

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Baker, P.: Kreol: a description of Mauritian Creole. C. Hurst, London (1972)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Wang, Y.Y., Yu, D., Ju, Y.C., Acero, A.: An introduction to voice search. IEEE Signal Process. Mag. 25(3), 28–38 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Milhorat, P., Schlögl, S., Chollet, G., Boudy, J., Esposito, A., Pelosi, G.: Building the next generation of personal digital assistants. In: 2014 1st International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Signal and Image Processing (ATSIP), pp. 458–463. IEEE (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Krauwer, S.: The basic language resource kit (BLARK) as the first milestone for the language resources roadmap. In: Proceedings of SPECOM 2003, pp. 8–15 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Berment, V.: Méthodes pour informatiser les langues et les groupes de langues peu dotées. Doctoral dissertation, Université Joseph-Fourier-Grenoble I (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Besacier, L., Barnard, E., Karpov, A., Schultz, T.: Automatic speech recognition for under-resourced languages: A survey. Speech Commun. 56, 85–100 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nuzhah Gooda Sahib-Kaudeer .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Gooda Sahib-Kaudeer, N., Gobin-Rahimbux, B., Bahsu, B.S., Maghoo, M.F.A. (2019). Automatic Speech Recognition for Kreol Morisien: A Case Study for the Health Domain. In: Salah, A., Karpov, A., Potapova, R. (eds) Speech and Computer. SPECOM 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11658. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26061-3_42

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26061-3_42

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-26060-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-26061-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics