New technology to improve Chechen-language speech synthesis
Scientists from the Chechen Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with specialists from the St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, have developed a technology that enables speech synthesis systems to correctly pronounce words in the Chechen language. This innovation will allow voice assistants, digital announcers, and other digital services to read texts aloud with greater accuracy. The *Chechnya Segodnya* newspaper reported the development, citing the Russian Ministry of Education and Science.
The new technology addresses a major challenge in speech synthesis: the correct pronunciation of homographs—words that are spelled identically but pronounced differently depending on their meaning. The new module identifies the correct pronunciation variant without relying on neural network technologies.
To achieve this, researchers developed three algorithms that help the system select the correct stress and pronunciation based on context. The WATCH algorithm yielded the best results, achieving an accuracy rate of approximately 85%.
The technology has already been integrated into a Chechen speech synthesis system. According to the project team, such technologies are particularly important for languages with limited existing text and audio data; a scarcity of such data had long been a primary obstacle to developing modern Chechen-language voice services.
