Speech audio pre-processing segmentation

An apparatus includes processor(s) to: divide a speech data set into multiple data chunks that each represent a chunk of speech audio; configure a neural network to implement an acoustic model that includes a CTC output; provide each data chunk to the neural network and monitor the CTC output for a string of blank symbols; designate each string of blank symbols from the CTC output that is at least as long as a predetermined blank threshold length as a likely sentence pause of a candidate set of likely sentence pauses; based on at least the candidate set, divide the speech data set into multiple data segments that each represent a speech segment of the speech audio; and perform speech-to-text conversion, to identify a sentence spoken in a selected language in each speech segment.