Overview: HLT industry in South Africa

E Barnard

Goals

Discuss

• Areas of significant commercial activity

• Primary commercial role players

for

• Speech technology

• Text technology (natural language processing)

Main industrial activities

• Telephone-based information systems– Dialogue systems: flight schedules, financial

services, …– Speaker verification: banking, call centres

• Document proofing systems– Spelling checkers, hyphenators, grammar

checkers, … (Microsoft, open source)

Main commercial players: text technology

• CTexT (North-West University): proofing tools, language learning, translation (assistance)

• TshwaneDJE: tools for lexicography, including HLT components

• Trados: translation assistance (limited localization)

• (Media24: media company with substantial text resources & interest in HLT)

Main commercial players: speech technology

• Intelleca Voice & Mobile: Nuance-based applications, development of ASR/TTS in SAE/Afrikaans for Nuance

• DataVoice: speaker verification, speech data mining

• CatchWord: SAE for IBM, SAE/Afrikaans for Telisma, speech-to-speech translation (Navy), Mobile E-Learning For Africa

• Grintek: speech data mining• (Dimension Data: Nuance-based applications –

successful in Australia)

Contextualization

• Deployment of HLTs

• Localization of HLTs• Development of tools• Development of new technologies

Motivation

• Voice dialing for mobile telco (~1995)– Dialing from open convertible …– Or moving car …– Or mobile in office …– Or landline

HLT does not transfer like “normal” software!