skip to main content
10.1145/1499224.1499285acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesicicConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Cultural voice markers in speech-to-speech machine translation systems

Published: 20 February 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Current implementations of real-time speech-to-speech (S2S) translation systems for intercultural collaboration have mainly focused on the accuracy of the recognition and translated content. Typically, the translated utterance is presented to users through text-to-speech (TTS), without projecting cultural nuances in the tone of voice. This study investigates whether there are cross-cultural markers of variations in voice dynamics, and, if these have any impact on user satisfaction. Based on subjective user evaluations (Chinese and English), we conclude that there are salient cross-cultural voice markers relevant to the interaction of culture and system design; with noticeable impact on user satisfaction in TTS and S2S systems.

References

[1]
Abercombie, D. Elements of Phonetics. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1967
[2]
Barber, W., and Badre, A. Culturability: The merging of culture and usability. In Proc. Human Factors and the Web (1998)
[3]
Beu, A., Honold, P., and Yuan, X. How to build up an infrastructure for intercultural usability engineering. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 12 (3&4), (2000), 347--358
[4]
Chao, Y.R. A Grammar of Spoken Chinese, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1968
[5]
Clemmensen, T., and Plocher, T. The cultural usability (CULTUSAB) project: Studies of cultural models in psychological usability evaluation methods, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4559, (2007), 274--280.
[6]
Crystal, D. Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1969
[7]
Day, D., and Evers, V. The role of culture in interface acceptance. International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, (1997), 260--267
[8]
Day, D., and Evers, V., Questionnaire development for multicultural data collection. In Proc. Workshop on Internationalization of Products and Systems, (1999)
[9]
Hofstede, G., Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. McGraw Hill, New York, New York, 1991
[10]
Ladefoged, P., and Maddieson, I. The Sounds of the World's Languages, Blackwell publishers, Oxford, 1996
[11]
Lehmann, W.P. Language and Linguistics in the People's Republic of China, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1975
[12]
Lyons, J. Semantics 1 and 2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977
[13]
Marcus, A. Culture: Wanted? Alive or dead? Journal of Usability Studies, 1(2), (2006), 62--63
[14]
Marcus, A., and Gould, E.M., Cultural dimensions and global web-user interface design. Interactions, (2000), 32--46
[15]
Murray, I., and Arnott, J. Toward the simulation of emotion in synthetic speech: A review of the literature on human vocal emotion, in Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 93 (1993), 1097--1108
[16]
O'Grady, W., and Dobrovolsky, M. Contemporary Linguistic Analysis: An Introduction, Copp Clark Pitman Press, Toronto, 1992
[17]
Pike, K.L. The intonation of American English. In Blinger, D. (eds) Intonation, Penguin Press: Harmondsworth, (1945/1972), 53--83
[18]
Vatrapu, R., and Pérez-Quiñones, M. Culture and usability evaluation: The effects of culture in structured interviews. Journal of Usability Studies, 1 (4), (2006), 156--170
[19]
Yeo, W.A., Cultural effects in usability assessment. In Proc. Human Factors in Computing Systems, (1998)

Cited By

View all
  • (2011)Culturally Determined PreferencesHandbook of Research on Culturally-Aware Information Technology10.4018/978-1-61520-883-8.ch004(74-93)Online publication date: 2011

Index Terms

  1. Cultural voice markers in speech-to-speech machine translation systems

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Information & Contributors

      Information

      Published In

      cover image ACM Conferences
      IWIC '09: Proceedings of the 2009 international workshop on Intercultural collaboration
      February 2009
      342 pages
      ISBN:9781605585024
      DOI:10.1145/1499224
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

      Sponsors

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 20 February 2009

      Permissions

      Request permissions for this article.

      Check for updates

      Author Tags

      1. automatic speech recognition
      2. culture
      3. intercultural collaboration
      4. machine translation
      5. text-to-speech
      6. usability
      7. user interface

      Qualifiers

      • Research-article

      Conference

      IWIC 09
      Sponsor:
      IWIC 09: International Workshop on Intercultural Collaboration 2009
      February 20 - 21, 2009
      California, Palo Alto, USA

      Acceptance Rates

      Overall Acceptance Rate 47 of 77 submissions, 61%

      Contributors

      Other Metrics

      Bibliometrics & Citations

      Bibliometrics

      Article Metrics

      • Downloads (Last 12 months)2
      • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
      Reflects downloads up to 15 Feb 2025

      Other Metrics

      Citations

      Cited By

      View all
      • (2011)Culturally Determined PreferencesHandbook of Research on Culturally-Aware Information Technology10.4018/978-1-61520-883-8.ch004(74-93)Online publication date: 2011

      View Options

      Login options

      View options

      PDF

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader

      Figures

      Tables

      Media

      Share

      Share

      Share this Publication link

      Share on social media