Dialect Detectives
Pedro Torres-Carrasquillo working on identifying different dialects using an automated computer program.
We live in such a diverse world today. With over 6 billion people of different ethnic backgrounds, spread across six continents, it’s sometimes hard to fathom the immensity and beauty of it all. However, one of the drawbacks of this diversity is the barriers it can create, in particular one of language. However, even within a single language, there may exist several different dialects that even native speakers can’t decipher. That’s where Pedro Torres-Carrasquillo and his colleagues at Lincoln Laboratory have come in.
While there exists language-detecting software currently on the market, no such identification system has been made for the different dialects that exist within a certain language. Torres-Carrasquillo, an electrical engineer specializing in speech processing, believes that by analyzing the frequency spectra of several short bursts of sound (using tools such as the Fast Fourier Transform), he will be able to pinpoint the key differences between different dialects.
Previously, Torres-Carrasquillo says, the approach was to “get a lot of examples, and then build a model that looks like your examples.” But he is tackling the problem in a different way. “Our group’s idea is that we don’t need a model that looks like our data – we need a model that can classify our data,” he explains. “We take very small pieces – snippets of speech – turn them into frequencies, add up all these contributions, and make a model that can tell them apart. We’re looking for patterns from just milliseconds of speech.”
According to Torres-Carrasquillo and his team, their technique will allow them to quantify the linguistic differences between dialects, such as the different pronunciations of vowel sounds between Cuban and Puerto Rican Spanish. So far, they have already been able to discriminate against American English and Indian-accented English with an error rate of only about 7 percent.
To me, this breakthrough illustrates how technology can not only simplify our lives, but can also break down barriers between people of different ethnicities and backgrounds. While it may be a stretch now, maybe one day this will pave the way for speech translators or digital language tutors. Vacation in Spain anyone?
