The World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) is to encourage support for multi-lingual
voice applications by unveiling the First Public Working Draft of
Speech
Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) 1.1.
W3C estimates that, within three years, the web will contain
significantly more content from Chinese and Indian languages, among
others.
The consortium added that, in many of the regions where these
languages are spoken, people can access the web more easily through
a less expensive mobile handset than through a desktop
computer.
It estimates that the world has more than 10 times as many mobile
phones as internet-connected personal computers.
With an improved SSML, people worldwide will have an increased
ability to listen to synthesised speech through mobile phones,
desktop computers and other devices.
This will extend the reach of computation and information delivery
to nearly every corner of the globe, according to the W3C.
SSML 1.1 improves on SSML 1.0 by adding support for more
conventions and practices in the world's languages.
One new feature helps to disambiguate "word boundaries" in
languages that do not use white space as a boundary, including
Chinese, Thai and Japanese.
SSML 1.1 allows references to language-specific pronunciation
alphabets, clarifying the relationship between the author's
specified speaking voice and the language being spoken.
It also provides finer-grained control over lexicon activation and
entry usage, along with features to better integrate with existing
and upcoming Speech Interface Framework specifications.