Apparatus and method for voice conversion using attribute information

A method of processing speech, the method comprising:

• storing in a storing means a plurality of speech units of a conversion-source speaker and source-speaker attribute information corresponding to the speech units;
• dividing the speech of a conversion-target speaker into a predetermined type of a speech unit to form target-speaker speech units;
• generating target-speaker attribute information corresponding to the target-speaker speech units from information on the speech of the conversion-target speaker or linguistic information of the speech;
• calculating costs on the target-speaker attribute information and the source-speaker attribute information using cost functions, and selecting one or a plurality of speech units with the same phoneme from the storing means according to the costs to form a source-speaker speech unit;
• and
• generating voice conversion functions for converting the one or the plurality of source-speaker speech units to the target-speaker speech units based on the target-speaker speech units and the one or a plurality of source-speaker speech units.

A computer-readable storage medium having stored therein a program for processing speech, the program causing a computer to implement a process comprising:

• storing a plurality of speech units of a conversion-source speaker and source-speaker attribute information corresponding to the speech units;
• dividing the speech of a conversion-target speaker into a predetermined type of a speech unit to form target-speaker speech units;
• generating target-speaker attribute information corresponding to the target-speaker speech units from information on the speech of the conversion-target speaker or linguistic information of the speech;
• calculating costs on the target-speaker attribute information and the source-speaker attribute information using cost functions, and selecting one or a plurality of speech units with the same phoneme from the conversion-source-speaker speech units according to the costs to form a source-speaker speech unit;
• and
• generating voice conversion functions for converting the one or a plurality of source-speaker speech units to the target-speaker speech units based on the target-speaker speech units and the one or the plurality of source-speaker speech units.