Turin, March 11th, 2005

Loquendo, the global speech technology company, today announced that the Loquendo TTS text-to-speech engine was awarded the “Best Innovation in Multi-Lingual Speech Synthesis” Prize at AVIOS-SpeechTEK West 2005, in San Francisco. The AVIOS-SpeechTEK Awards are presented to companies for their technology innovations and are selected by a committee assembled by American Voice Input/Output Society (AVIOS) board members.

At SpeechTEK West, Loquendo unveiled the new emotional version of the Loquendo TTS engine. Loquendo is the first speech market player to offer its customers the possibility to make their vocal messages as expressive as human conversation. Besides conveying Emotional Expressivity, the new version of Loquendo TTS provides a range of advanced features, including Mixed Language Support and Audio Mixing in a vast array of languages from around the world.

Loquendo offers a full range of technological components to rapidly and easily create best-of-breed solutions in 16 languages. Currently available languages include U.S. and U.K. English, Castilian, Catalan, Mexican, Chilean and Argentinean Spanish, Italian, German, French, Dutch, Greek, Mandarin Chinese, Brazilian, Portuguese and Swedish in both male and female voices.

About AVIOS
AVIOS is a 22-year-old, not-for-profit professional membership organization founded as the American Voice Input/Output Society. For much of this time, the AVIOS annual conference was the only forum dedicated to practical applications of advanced speech technology (going beyond basic research). The conference has matured into AVIOS-SpeechTEK West though a partnership with AmComm Inc.

About Loquendo - Vocal Technology and Services
With over 30 years of R&D expertise, Loquendo is at the forefront of the global speech technologies market. Its high-quality, high-performance technologies (Loquendo TTS - text to speech, Loquendo ASR - automatic speech recognition, Loquendo Speech Server, Loquendo Speaker Verification) and platforms guarantee systems integrators the best solutions in 16 languages and 36 voices - with more coming soon.

From its headquarters in Turin, Italy, Loquendo deploys technologies that power millions of calls every day in the telecommunications and enterprise markets throughout the world.

For more information, visit www.loquendo.com.