Multi-agent based Arabic speech synthesis

Natural Language Processing (NLP) has many applications such as Speech recognition, Speech understanding, and Speech synthesis. Several approaches have been proposed in the literature in dealing with NLP. This paper describes an ongoing research project that tackles Speech Arabic Synthesis using multi-agent system techniques. The system consists of five modules (agents): the User Interface Agent (UIA), the Facilitator Agent (FA), the Preprocessing Agent (PPA), the Orthographic and Phonetic Transcription Agent, and the Speech Generation Agent. These agents are communicating with each other to construct agent sub societies representing the user input. All the agents are cognitive, work together, and communicate with the Knowledge-Base and the Sound Segments Database to generate Arabic speech signals. We used 800 Arabic sentences and asked 10 listeners with different levels of knowledge of the Arab language to accomplish the evaluation perception process. The system presents in general a Success Rate of 86% for the set of 800 tested sentences.