The CSTR entry to the Blizzard Challenge 2021

Dan Wells, Pilar Oplustil-Gallegos, Simon King
The Centre for Speech Technology Research
University of Edinburgh

This is the companion webpage for our entry to the Blizzard Challenge 2021 spoke task for synthesizing Spanish utterances including some English words. For a detailed description of the system we submitted, read our paper here.

Audio samples

The table below presents a selection of the audio samples submitted to the main Blizzard Challenge evaluation and used in our supplementary listening test. In our experiments with different nativization strategies, each sample was presented alongside its text transcript, with English words highlighted in bold.

We asked participants to rate each sample on a 5-point Likert scale (from "disagree" to "agree") with regard to the following statements:

  1. This phrase is very natural.
  2. Considering the marked words, this speaker shows mastery of English.
  3. I would pronounce the English words the same way.

System key

BlizzardMixNatEsp
FPFPFP
Inhibit Face and Neck-Lift: El 'lifting' de cabina definitivo para rostro, cuello y escote.
Y no es tanto 'spoiler' como motor obvio y auténtico sentido de la película.
La Bolsa suspendió sus operaciones por treinta minutos mediante el mecanismo circuit breaker.
Lo sucedido provocó que un 'hashtag' que animaba a boicotear Mulán se convirtiera en 'trending topic' en Twitter y que la intérprete recibiera un aluvión de críticas.
Joy of Life está basado en una novela de viajes en el tiempo.
El 'reboot' de Gossip Girl sigue adelante.