This tantalizing news item from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) gives a glimpse of what the web may offer in the near future with online sites in diverse languages intelligibly accessible to anyone, not just for a single-language targeted audience. Indeed the broadened audience becomes as wide as the world through instant SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) translations. It's a pleasure to read about authentic innovation in the midst of the Blackboard patent controversy which centers on false claims about innovation. (Thanks to Campus Technology for this reference.) ______JH
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Voice Applications and Under-represented Languages Are Growing on the Web
It is estimated that within three years, the World Wide Web will contain significantly more content from currently under-represented languages, such as Chinese and Indian language families.
In many of the regions where these languages are spoken, people can access the Web more easily through a mobile handset than through a desktop computer. There are more than 10 times as many cellphones in the world today as there are Internet-connected PCs.
An improved SSML will increase the ability of people world-wide to listen to synthesized speech through mobile phones, desktop computers, or other devices, greatly extending the reach of computation and information delivery into nearly every corner of the globe.
Expanding the Range of Languages Supported in Standards is Critical
The participants in the W3C Workshop reached conclusions that support the expansion of the SSML standard.
For example, the Workshop participants expressed the need to add to the standard the ability to represent features of spoken language, including tone, syllabic stress or accent, and duration in a machine-readable fashion. In some languages, these attributes are an important factor in determining meaning.
The goal of the next phase is to identify a few basic mechanisms that can greatly extend the power of SSML to better cover more of the world's languages.
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