Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > A Crowdsourcing Smartphone Application for Swis...

Links

View graph of relations

A Crowdsourcing Smartphone Application for Swiss German: Putting language documentation in the hands of the users

Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSNConference contribution/Paperpeer-review

Published
  • Jean-Philippe Goldman
  • Adrian Leemann
  • Marie-José Kolly
  • Ingrid Hove
  • Ibrahim Almajai
  • Volker Dellwo
  • Steven Moran
Close
Publication date2015
Host publicationProceedings of LREC 2014
EditorsNicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Thierry Declerck, Hrafn Loftsson, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Asuncion Moreno, Jan Odijk, Stelios Piperidis
PublisherEuropean Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Number of pages4
ISBN (print)9782951740884
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This contribution describes an on-going projects a smartphone application called Voice Äpp, which is a follow-up of a previous application called Dialäkt Äpp. The main purpose of both apps is to identify the user’s Swiss German dialect on the basis of the dialectal variations of 15 words. The result is returned as one or more geographical points on a map. In Dialäkt Äpp, launched in 2013, the user provides his or her own pronunciation through buttons, while the Voice Äpp, currently in development, asks users to pronounce the word and uses speech recognition techniques to identify the variants and localize the user. This second app is more challenging from a technical point of view but nevertheless recovers the nature of dialect variation of spoken language. Besides, the Voice Äpp takes its users on a journey in which they explore the individuality of their own voices, answering questions such as: How high is my voice? How fast do I speak? Do I speak faster than users in the neighbouring city?