The German Text-to-Speech Synthesis System MARY: A Tool for Research, Development and Teaching

Abstract

This paper introduces the German text-to-speech synthesis system MARY. The system's main features, namely a modular design and an XML-based system-internal data representation, are pointed out, and the properties of the individual modules are briefly presented. An interface allowing the user to access and modify intermediate processing steps without the need for a technical understanding of the system is described, along with examples of how this interface can be put to use in research, development and teaching. The usefulness of the modular and transparent design approach is further illustrated with an early prototype of an interface for emotional speech synthesis.