Evaluation of the telef nica i+d natural numbers recognizer over different dialects of Spanish from Spain and America

Abstract

Presents the results obtained when evaluating the Natural Numbers Recognizer of Telefonica Investigacion y Desarrollo (I+D) over some particular dialects of Spanish from Spain and America. The evaluation was made over two different data sets, corresponding to two different situations. The first set includes dialects of Spanish from Spain that were considered in the training and design of our baseline system, and the second set corresponds to Argentinian Spanish, which was not considered in the training of the original system. Because we are interested in a system that can be used by a wide range of users, we tested the possibilities of MAP (maximum a-priori) techniques to adapt the original HMMs in order to represent all the dialects. The experimental results show the capabilities of our recognizer for use in applications spread over a great number of Spanish-speaking countries.