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A novel method for Mandarin speech synthesis by inserting prosodic structure prediction into Tacotron2

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Abstract

Speech synthesis, an artificial intelligence technology that employs computers to imitate human speech, has played a crucial role in human–computer interaction since it can automatically convert text into speech with satisfactory intelligibility and naturalness. Tacotron2 is the second generation end-to-end English speech synthesis model developed by Google. As Mandarin becomes more and more popular in the world, the associated speech synthesis technologies have been applied in various applications. Aiming at extending Tacotron2 to synthesize Mandarin speech, we propose in this paper a novel synthesis method by adding a Mandarin-to-PinYin module and a prosodic structure prediction model into Tacotron2. By evaluating synthesized results with subjective and objective methods, the added prosodic structure prediction model is demonstrated to help Tacotron2 synthesize more natural and human-like Mandarin speech.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the high-performance computing platform of Xi’an Jiaotong University which provides us convenient and efficient computing resources. This research was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (no. 2018AAA0102201), the National Natural Science Foundations of China (no. 61877049).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematics and Statistics, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, Shaanxi, China

    Junmin Liu, Zhuangzhuang Xie, Chunxia Zhang & Guang Shi

  2. Beijing Sankuai Online Technology Company Ltd., Beijing, 100102, China

    Zhuangzhuang Xie

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  1. Junmin Liu
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  2. Zhuangzhuang Xie
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  3. Chunxia Zhang
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  4. Guang Shi
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Correspondence to Chunxia Zhang.

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Liu, J., Xie, Z., Zhang, C. et al. A novel method for Mandarin speech synthesis by inserting prosodic structure prediction into Tacotron2. Int. J. Mach. Learn. & Cyber. 12, 2809–2823 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13042-021-01365-x

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