JPH01150972A - Voice synthesizing electronic dictionary - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To prevent interruption due to a word, whose meaning is obscure, during a reading by providing a manual scanning type optical system feature reading part, which converts a printed character string to a time series concentration information, a character recognizing part, an electronic dictionary part, a dictionary retrieving part and a voice synthesizing part. CONSTITUTION:The title device equips a manual scanning type optical system feature reading part 1, a character recognizing part 2, an electronic dictionary part 4, a dictionary retrieving part 3 and a sound synthesizing part 5. Here, the voice synthesizing part 5 inputs a meaning explaining code and an pronouncing symbol code string and executes Japanese meaning explanation and English pronounciation by voice. Thus, when the word, whose meaning is obscure, appears in the reading, only by executing a scanning on the word with a manual compact OCR1, dictionary retrieval is automatically executed and the meaning or pronounciation is informed by voice. Then, it is not necessary for a user to interrupt the reading.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Field of Industrial Application The present invention relates to a speech synthesis electronic dictionary that optically reads a printed character string and outputs its meaning and pronunciation by voice.

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, with rapid advances in electronics technology, especially LSI technology and computer technology, various pocket-sized electronic dictionaries have been put into practical use. Furthermore, with advances in semiconductor and microfabrication technology, optical feature readers (OCR) have become smaller, and technology has also emerged for reading printed materials such as books and magazines and converting them into characters. However, no attempt has been made to combine electronic dictionaries and OCR.

Problems to be solved by the inventionHowever, as mentioned above, OCR is used as an input part of an electronic dictionary.
If the computer is not connected and a keyboard is used as an input device, it is necessary to input the word name into the keyboard each time a word to be looked up in the dictionary appears, and it is also necessary to look at the display to check the contents of the dictionary.

As a result, the original action of reading characters was interrupted, leading to a decrease in reading speed.

In view of the above problems, the present invention provides a speech synthesis electronic dictionary that enables dictionary lookups without interrupting reading.

Means for Solving the Problems In order to solve the above problems, the speech synthesis electronic dictionary of the present invention includes a manual scanning optical feature reading section, a character recognition section, an electronic dictionary section, a dictionary search section, It is equipped with a structure called a speech synthesis section.

With the above-described structure, the present invention automatically performs a dictionary search when a meaningless word appears while reading, by simply scanning the word with a small manual OCR, and informs the reader of the meaning and pronunciation by voice. Users no longer have to interrupt their reading.

Embodiment Hereinafter, a speech synthesis electronic dictionary according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows the structure of a speech synthesis English-Japanese dictionary in an embodiment of the present invention. In Figure 1, 1 is an O that optically reads printed characters and outputs a time-series shading pattern.
CR section 2 is a character recognition section that converts the grayscale pattern output from 1 into an English character code string; 3 receives the output character code string from 2 as input, and extracts the meaning explanatory character code string and pronunciation symbol from the electronic English-Japanese dictionary at 4. Dictionary search unit for searching code strings; 4 is an electronic English-Japanese dictionary storing meaning-explanatory character code strings and phonetic symbol code strings corresponding to English word character code strings; 5 is a meaning-explanatory character code string and phonetic symbol code strings; This is a speech synthesis unit that takes input as input and performs Japanese meaning explanation and English pronunciation by voice. The operation of the speech synthesis English-Japanese dictionary configured as follows will be explained below with reference to FIG. The OCR section 1 in FIG. 1 has the appearance shown in FIG. Second
In the figure, reference numeral 6 denotes a push button switch, which outputs a shading pattern as a time series while being pressed down.

In other words, if the English word "name" is scanned horizontally from left to right while pressing switch 6, a shading pattern as shown in FIG. 3 will be output. The character recognition section 2 prepares various English character patterns, and compares them with the character patterns while normalizing the length in the vertical and horizontal directions, and as a result, it generates the ASCII code string corresponding to n a m e''. This code string is input to the dictionary search section 3.The electronic English-Japanese dictionary 4 has “nam
A code string corresponding to the character ``name'' and a code string corresponding to the phonetic symbol string ``neim'' are stored as the meaning explanatory sentence corresponding to ``e.'' A search is performed, and the code information stored in the electronic English-Japanese dictionary 4 is sent to the speech synthesis section 5.The speech synthesis section 5 synthesizes speech from the code string, and the result is output from the speaker. Ru.

As described above, according to this embodiment, the OCR unit outputs character string pattern shading information by manually scanning printed characters, the character recognition unit recognizes character strings from character string patterns, and an electronic English-Japanese dictionary that stores meaning explanations and phonetic symbol code strings corresponding to word names, and a dictionary search unit that searches the electronic English-Japanese dictionary using character code strings and outputs meaning explanation character code strings and phonetic symbol code strings; By providing a speech synthesis unit that synthesizes speech from character code strings and phonetic symbol code strings, it is possible to prevent interruptions in reading due to dictionary lookups that occur when reading English books, magazines, etc., and at the same time learn correct pronunciation. I can do things.

Effects of the Invention As described above, the present invention includes a manual scanning type optical feature reading section that converts a printed character string into time-series grayscale information, a character recognition section, an electronic dictionary section, a dictionary search section, and a voice recognition section. By providing the synthesis section, it is possible to prevent reading from being interrupted by meaningless words.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a speech synthesis English-Japanese dictionary according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is an external view of its OCR section, and FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a grayscale pattern for the English word "name." 1...OCR section, 2...Character recognition section,
3...Dictionary search unit, 4...Electronic English-Japanese dictionary, 5...Speech synthesis unit, 6...Switch. Name of agent: Patent attorney Toshio Nakao (1 person) Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Ginma

Claims (1)

[Claims] a manual scanning optical feature reading section that converts a printed character string into time-series gradation information; and inputting the time-series gradation information output from the manual scanning optical feature reading section and outputting a character code string. a character recognition unit; an electronic dictionary unit that stores dictionary information corresponding to a character string code that is a heading; and a dictionary that searches the electronic dictionary unit for dictionary information that corresponds to the character code string that is an output of the character recognition unit. a search department;
A speech synthesis electronic dictionary comprising: a speech synthesis section that synthesizes speech from the dictionary information output from the dictionary search section.