Ljubomir Josifovski, Dragan Mihajlov, Dejan Gorgevik, Suzana Loskovska, Sasko Stefanovski

Abstract: A subsystem for text-to-speech (TTS) conversion for Macedonian language as a part of a system for support of humans with damaged sight will be presented in this paper. The whole system includes recognition of printed Cyrillic text, archiving, TTS conversion and printing on a Braille printer. None of tested commercial programs for generating human speech on personal computer is appropriate for Macedonian language. Therefore a subsystem for real-time TTS conversion from unrestricted text is under development. The whole architecture of the subsystem and some of it's major modules will be presented here. Number of techniques, like automatic generation of prosodic rules, time scale modification of speech based on nonlinear oscillator model and flexible speech units inventory will be used to overcome the fact that Macedonian language is comparatively poorly researched