The Polysemy Problems, an Important Issue in a Chinese to Taiwanese TTS System

This paper brings up an important issue, the polysemy problems, in a Chinese to Taiwanese TTS system. Polysemy means there are words with more than one meaning or pronunciation, such as “¿¿”(we), “¿”(no), “¿”(you), “¿”(I), “¿”(want), and so on. We focus on the Chinese word “¿¿” (we) to show how imperative the polysemy problem in a Chinese to Taiwanese TTS system is. There are two pronunciations of the word “¿¿”(we) in Taiwanese, /ghun/ and /lan/. The corresponding Chinese words are “¿” and “¿”. We propose two approachs and their combination to solve this problem. The results show that we have a 93.1% precision in translating the correct meaning and pronunciation of the word “¿¿” (we) from Chinese to Taiwanese.