Speech-to-Speech Translation System for the two Holy cities

Abstract

A Speech-to-speech (S2S) translation system is proposed to translate Arabic speech to other languages and the  main focus is on the holy cities of Makkah Al-Mukarramah and Al-Madīnah Al-Munawwarah (hurmain). They are amongst the world’s most visited holy cities, specially every year only in Hajj (Pilgrimage) season more than 1.3 million international Mu’tamirs (pilgrims) visit the two holy cities. Moreover, throughout the year more than 5 million Mu’tamirs visit the holy cities. As the visitors are from all over the world speaking different languages but the Imams (Prayer leaders) in the Harmayn speak Arabic only during their Sermons. This paper is aimed at a Speech-to-Speech translator application mainly from Arabic to other languages in real time.

The idea proposed is for an application that could recognize the Voice of the speaker first, be able to recognize the language of the speaker and to ask for the language in which it needs to be translated. It recognizes spoken input, analyses and translates it, and finally utters the translation. It should pause and start depending on the voice of the person. Speech Translation is the process by which conversational spoken phrases are instantly translated and spoken aloud in a second language. Furthermore, this differs from phrase translation, which is where the system only translates a fixed and finite set of phrases that have been manually entered into the system. Any device could be used for translating it could be a mobile phone which could have an application, Laptop which could use software or any other Hand held PDA’s.