Automatic Rule Based Phonetic Transcription and Syllabification for Quranic Text

Abstract

Speech processing has been the subject of an extensive number of research studies. Speech synthesis is the process of transferring text to speech. Phonetic transcription represents an essential part of any text-to-speech system. This paper proposes a transcription technique dedicated for the Quranic text. Transcribing Quranic text is a challenging problem as some letters have different phonemes for the same letter, depending on its neighbors. Different rules are proposed to handle the problem of Quranic text transcription depending on the art of Intonation (Tajweed). In addition, a rule based syllabification technique is presented. This research will have a good impact in the service of Holy Quran and its science. This research work is important to implement Quran recitation synthesis prototype as it addresses Quranic text transcription and syllabification. Quran recitation synthesis has main motivation of reducing space of Quranic sound files.