Template-based methods for sentence generation and speech synthesis

Here we propose a sentence-generation method using templates that can be applied to create a speech database. This method requires the recording of a relatively small sentence set, and the resultant speech database can generate comparatively natural sounding synthesized speech. Applying this method to the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) weather report radio program reduced the size of the required sentence set to just a fraction of that required by comparable methods. We also propose a speech-synthesis method using templates. In an evaluation test, 66% of the speech samples synthesized by the proposed method using templates were preferred to those produced by the conventional concatenative speech synthesis method.