A focus on codemixing and codeswitching in Tamil speech to text

Pubadi, Dheenesh; Basandrai, Ayush; Mashat, Ahmed; Chiurunga, Zvikomborero; Gandhi, Ishan; Ofei, William; Navaladi, Logesh; Ogunshile, Emmanuel; Ramachandran, Raj

Abstract

This paper attempts to develop an application that converts Tamil language speech to Tamil text, with a view to encourage usage and indirectly ensure linguistic preservation of a classical language. The application converts spoken Tamil to text without auto-correction, code-mixing or code-switching. Tamil is a syllabic language, similar to other Indian languages and some unique features such as instances of allophones, short long vowels and lack of aspirated stops produces some challenges in developing a speech to text app. This project is a technology demonstration of a complete web application, which, when perfected, could be used to act as a teaching tool to encourage correct pronunciation of syllables and words for native and non-native Tamil speakers. A report by the Business Standard India e-publication in the year 2019 highlighted the decline in the usage of the Tamil language, and indeed separate reports in Singapore and Malaysia, which both have large numbers of Tamil speakers indicate that there have been concerns about the relevance and usage of the Tamil language as a spoken means of communication among the community. The research maintains that it is important to maintain the utilization of Tamil language via technology to help preservation of one of the oldest surviving languages in the world. The work further emphasizes on the indigenous design considerations for such applications which may be different to traditional software engineering approaches..

Citation

Navaladi, L., Gandhi, I., Ofei, W., Chiurunga, Z., Mashat, A., Basandrai, A., …Ramachandran, R. (in press). A focus on codemixing and codeswitching in Tamil speech to text. In 2020 8th International Conference in Software Engineering Research and Innovation (CONISOFT) (154-165). https://doi.org/10.1109/CONISOFT50191.2020.00031

• Conference Name: CONISOFT 2020 : IEEE 8th International Conference on Software Engineering Research and Innovation
• Conference Location: Mexico City
• Start Date: Nov 4, 2020
• End Date: Nov 6, 2020
• Acceptance Date: Jul 10, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Dec 31, 2020
• Deposit Date: Jul 15, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 1, 2021
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• Pages: 154-165
• Book Title: 2020 8th International Conference in Software Engineering Research and Innovation (CONISOFT)
• ISBN: 9781728184500
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/CONISOFT50191.2020.00031
• Keywords: Automatic speech recognition (ASR), Analog-to-digital converter (ADC), Application Programing Interface (API) Tamil, Speech to Text, web application, Software Engineering design
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/6250470
• Publisher URL: http://conisoft.org/2020/