Foreign language audio information management system

Veridian created a prototype of a foreign language audio information management system that integrates speech recognition technology, machine translation and advanced information retrieval and extraction for Mandarin Chinese. The system automatically processes audio recordings to create a data warehouse of derived information using speech recognition and machine translation technology components. The data warehouse can then be further exploited using information retrieval technology components. The prototype system provides the following capabilities: Automatically transforming foreign audio files into electronic text; Transforming foreign text into English text; Matching transcribed and translated text and the topics of interest to the analyst; Displaying transcribed text by speaker. The conclusions imply that while automatic speech processing technology is far from perfect for mass market distribution, it is sufficiently advanced to help with the overload of audio and video data.