abair.ie The Irish Language Synthesiser

1 June, 2018
Lorna Carson

abair.ie is a speech synthesiser for Irish — it turns written words into speech. (The Irish word "abair" means "say".)

The www.abair.ie project takes Irish to the heart of language technology and offers a new way for the public to access the language. It is a unique system, which turns Irish written text into the spoken word. To date, a female synthetic voice speaking with an Ulster dialect was available on www.abair.ie. An important phase in the overall development of the project is now being reached with the launch of a second voice, which is a male synthetic voice with a Connaught dialect. The preparation of a synthesised Munster voice is underway and will be launched at a future date.

Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesis turns written text into speech. More often than not, speech synthesis is based on natural human speech, that is the synthesiser takes speech sounds from prerecorded human speech and concatenates them to generate the sentences as they are typed. Due to technological progress in recent years, speech synthesis has become quite common. You can hear it in elevators in shopping centres, on the GPS system in your car, on mobile phones, and computer operating systems usually feature TTS synthesis.

The project has been developed as a result of research at the Phonetics and Speech Lab., Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College Dublin. The project developers are very pleased to have obtained funding from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, which will guarantee the continuation of the project for the next three years. Credit is also due to those who have supported the project until now. These include COGG, Foras na Gaeilge and the EU (INTERREG).

Target language

Irish/English

Level (CEFR/ACTFL)

Multilevel

Beginning date

01 / 01 / 2008

Created by

Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College Dublin (IE)

Implemented at

Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College Dublin (IE)

Audience

- Secondary Education - Higher Education - Teacher Training - Lifelong Learning

Educational technologies and tools

- Audiovisual media development and implementation [audio (podcasts, etc.) and video (dubbing and subtitling), etc.]

Teaching methods

- Face-to-face learning/blended learning/online learning - Lectures/(Hands-on) practice/Internships/Community service/Seminars/Oral presentations/Group discussions - Autonomous learning

Contact information

PI	Prof Ailbhe Ní Chasaide
	Phonetics and Speech Laboratory Arts Building Room 4091 Trinity College Dublin 2 Ireland
Email:	abair.tcd@gmail.com
Phone:	+353 (0)1 896 1348

	http://www.tcd.ie/slscs/clcs/psl/

How to cite this best practice?

Carson, Lorna; Ní Chasaide, Ailbhe Gobl, Christer Uí Dhonnchadha, Elaine Duggan, John Berthelsen, Harald Ní Chiaráin, Neasa Wendler, Christoph Murphy, Andy. (2008). "abair.ie The Irish Language Synthesiser". Online: https://foco.usal.es/en/fichas/abair-ie-the-irish-language-synthesiser/. Repositorio FOCO [20-04-2024].