Work in Progress: Text-to-speech on Edge Devices for Te Reo Māori and ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi

Tūreiti Keith


Abstract
Existing popular text-to-speech technologies focus on large models requiring a large corpus of recorded speech to train. The resulting models are typically run on high-resource servers where users synthesise speech from a client device requiring constant connectivity. For speakers of low-resource languages living in remote areas, this approach does not work. Corpora are typically small and synthesis needs to run on an unconnected, battery or solar-powered edge device. In this paper, we demonstrate how knowledge transfer and adversarial training can be used to create efficient models capable of running on edge devices using a corpus of only several hours. We apply these concepts to create a voice synthesiser for te reo Māori (the indigenous language of Aotearoa New Zealand) for a non-speaking user and ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi (the indigenous language of Hawaiʻi) for a legally blind user, thus creating the first high-quality text-to-speech tools for these endangered, central-eastern Polynesian languages capable of running on a low powered edge device.
Anthology ID:
2024.sigul-1.50
Volume:
Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Under-resourced Languages @ LREC-COLING 2024
Month:
May
Year:
2024
Address:
Torino, Italia
Editors:
Maite Melero, Sakriani Sakti, Claudia Soria
Venues:
SIGUL | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA and ICCL
Note:
Pages:
421–426
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.sigul-1.50
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Tūreiti Keith. 2024. Work in Progress: Text-to-speech on Edge Devices for Te Reo Māori and ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi. In Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Under-resourced Languages @ LREC-COLING 2024, pages 421–426, Torino, Italia. ELRA and ICCL.
Cite (Informal):
Work in Progress: Text-to-speech on Edge Devices for Te Reo Māori and ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi (Keith, SIGUL-WS 2024)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.sigul-1.50.pdf