Design and Implementation of the Luganda Talking Clock and Calendar.

Abstract

Software Clocks and Calendars with Text-To-Speech capabilities 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 date and time in their native language.” In the methodology, we used expert consultation and surveys techniques of data collection. Designing of the digital clock and a calendar in a web interface, and then used MaryTTS, a free text-tospeech development platform, to build and integrate a Luganda voice in our interface. Luganda recordings of about 1578 were got from CBS that were individually split using a software tool known as Audacity. This required phonetic transcription with Java and a MySQL database containing audios previously split by professional 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.