One voice, transformed to many tongues

BY KEVIN COUGHLIN, Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Star-Ledger Staff

NEW YORK -- You can't believe everything you see on the Web, where digital images are eas ily faked.
Now, maybe you can't trust your ears, either.
A small New York City company called Voxonic is perfecting technology to translate your voice into foreign languages -- or even put words into the mouths of dead celebrities.
Imagine personalized celebrity greetings on MySpace pages. Or hit songs released in many tongues, by the original artists. Corporate chief tains might deliver speeches in the native language of their audience. You could astound friends by leaving voicemail in Urdu.
All that is needed is a 10-minute voice sample, says Arie Deutsch, the 26-year-old president of Voxonic.
Proprietary software extracts distinctive "phonemes" -- the basic sounds that form words. "It's the DNA of your voice," Deutsch says.
Voxonic then combines phonemes with a recording of an actor reading a text in the language of choice.
For short messages without much emotion, no actor is required. The computer program simply rearranges your phonemes. Voxonic strives to deliver the illusion that you're doing the talking, not a robot or actor.
The technology can even make an actor with a different gender and vocal range sound like you, Deutsch says.
"At first we felt we needed a common phonetic script: 'I-wash- my-clothes-in-greasy-water,' tongue-twisters. After four years, I decided that free speech yields far superior results," Deutsch says.