| dc.description.abstract | Software programs with Text-To-Speech capabilities (verbal greeting) have been around for
quite a while in languages like English, French and German. Our project sought to replicate these
systems in Luganda and the problem of the “Lack of localization software programs for native
Luganda speaking people, especially the semi-literate and visually impaired, with specific focus
on keeping them updated with weather, date and time in their native language.”
In the methodology, we used expert consultation and surveys techniques of data collection to
design the Luganda greeter and weather updates in a web interface, and then used MaryTTS, a
free text-to speech development platform, to build and integrate a Luganda voice in our interface.
Luganda recordings of about 2125 were got from a radio station that were individually split
using a software tool known as Audacity. This required phonetic transcription with Java and
audios previously recorded from an experienced voice talent, their corresponding text and
phonetic transcriptions and tags. Finally, we trained the voice using Mary Voice import tools and
uploaded the voice to be accessed at the click of a button from our interface.
Our findings were that previous work in the field of speech synthesis in Luganda was not natural
sounding, and we expect our project to make improvements in terms of intelligibility and
naturalness | en_US |
