RIYADH, 10 September — A Saudi company launched yesterday a new technology related to the transmission of SMS on mobile phone and voice recognition system in Arabic.
Abdullatif S. Al-Dubie, general manager of Systems Adaptation & Developments Co. (Tatweer1), told a press conference here that the Arabized version of the ATT/TTS technology, the first of its kind in the Middle East, works both on mobile and regular phones. The Audio to Text (ATT) and Text to Speech (TTS) system was Arabized by Emerging Technologies of the UAE. Fifty experts from the Kingdom and the UAE were involved in the project, which was developed after 18 months of research. It could be accessed on www.tatweer1.com. for details. A demonstration of the voice-activated system provided news update in Arabic on the landline. Similarly, an incoming e-mail was read out on the mobile phone. The technology also finds applications in the banking, transportation, education, healthcare, real estate, press and advertising, as well as all other public and private sectors where speedy transactions are required for converting Arabic dictation into written text. The visually impaired could also rely on it to program their telephones to hear news updates, stock market reports, and other relevant data, while e-government transactions are also possible through ATT/TTS. According to Jahed A. Daouk, the company’s sales manager, the system yields 50 to 75 percent savings in operational cost, as voice-activated command automatically converts the oral message into written text for editing and fine-tuning. It also boosts productivity and dispenses with the need for getting transcripts of a speech. Speaking on the occasion, Abdullatif said the Tatweer team had achieved a major breakthrough in the Arabization of the voice-recognition technology that makes it possible to transcribe voice into Arabic text and vice versa.
There is no need for a computer or Internet connection any more in order to read or compose e-mails so long as one has dial-up facility, be it mobile or landline. The reply could also be sent orally to the sender.
In the Kingdom only five percent of the population has access to data on the Internet, when there are eight million phone lines.
