Turin, 24th August 2009

Loquendo, leading provider of speech technologies worldwide, launches Loquendo TTS in Australian English, with the voice of Alan, and releases the first male Russian voice, Dmitri.

The addition of Australian English allows Loquendo to fully cater for the needs of its clients in that region, which is demonstrating particular dynamism and interest in speech.

After the release of Loquendo ASR in Russian earlier this year, Dmitri and Olga (the female Russian voice) now make the full array of Loquendo speech technologies available to our partners in the Russian-speaking world.

Loquendo's portfolio of voices and languages is arguably the most extensive in the industry, giving the company a truly global reach in Europe, North and South America, Russia, Australia and beyond.

The release of these new voices is complemented by a new version of the speech engine. Loquendo TTS 7.8 now offers support for the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Users can insert transcriptions written in IPA directly into their prompts, and Loquendo TTS will read them perfectly and seamlessly.

Loquendo TTS now also supports the Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) 1.0, a W3C Recommendation standard which allows prompt designers to specify pronunciation information within a VoiceXML document. This is a rapid way of resolving pronunciation issues within, say, Speech Recognition Grammars or lengthy TTS prompts, for example: multiple spellings, same pronunciation (base, bass); multiple pronunciations, same spelling (recòrd, rècord).

These new features are also made readily available to developers through a new release of Loquendo TTS Director – the multi-platform, multi-feature prompt designing tool. This includes an enhanced Lexicon Manager, which now allows prompt designers to automatically generate IPA transcriptions, just as they can already do in the SAMPA phonetic alphabet. IPA transcriptions are easy to modify, and the pronunciation can be rapidly verified by simply clicking ‘Play’, before pasting into a prompt.

Loquendo also continues to expand the range of sound effects accessible via Loquendo TTS Director – which now includes a choice of nine robotic effects and a brand new ‘whispering’ effect, both of which can be activated with just three mouse clicks. These controls introduce elements of tone and texture to Loquendo’s synthetic voices, opening up new possibilities for entertainment and infotainment applications, for use in computer games, car navigation, social networking applications, etc.

Loquendo TTS is available for all environments - Telephony, Multimedia and Embedded – and comes in a wide choice of footprints for creating speech-enabled applications on any device. All Loquendo technologies are available with the same full range of expressive voices and languages, all with the same core engine.

The Loquendo TTS family has now reached a total of 27 languages and 65 voices, including: Russian, Australian English, U.S. and U.K. English, Mandarin Chinese, French, Canadian French, American Spanish, Mexican, Chilean and Argentinian Spanish, Castilian, Catalan, Valencian, Galician, Brazilian, Portuguese, Esperanto, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Polish, Greek, Turkish and Italian, in both male and female voices, with Norwegian to follow later this year, and more under development all the time.

Hear Alan or Listen to Dmitri for yourself, or meet the full Loquendo TTS family.

About Loquendo - Vocal Technology and Services
Winner of 'Market Leader-Best Speech Engine' at the 2008 and 2007 Speech Industry Awards, Loquendo is the leading innovator in speech recognition and speech synthesis - providing a complete range of technologies for server, embedded and desktop solutions. Currently available in 27 languages with 65 voices, and constantly growing, Loquendo's best-in-breed technologies enhance customer satisfaction and greatly reduce costs.

Loquendo TTS, Loquendo ASR, and Loquendo Speaker Identification and Verification are high-quality, high-performance technologies which are also available on the Loquendo MRCP Server and VoiceXML and CCXML platform. Furthermore, Loquendo TTS and ASR are available as Loquendo Embedded Technologies for deploying speech applications in embedded and mobile environments.

Many enterprises and carriers around the world have recognized the Loquendo difference, and our advanced technologies power millions of calls every day in the telecommunications and enterprise markets across the globe, as well as being deployed in more than 7 million devices worldwide.

Loquendo is a Telecom Italia company headquartered in Turin, Italy, with offices in the US, Spain, Germany and France, and a worldwide network of partners.

For more information about Loquendo, and to hear demos of all Loquendo voices, go to www.loquendo.com.