Work in Progress: Text-to-speech on Edge Devices for Te Reo Māori and ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi

AbstractExisting popular text-to-speech technologies focus on large models requiring a large corpus of recorded speech to train. The resulting models are typically run on high-resource servers where users synthesise speech from a client device requiring constant connectivity. For speakers of low-resource languages living in remote areas, this approach does not work. Corpora are typically small and synthesis needs to run on an unconnected, battery or solar-powered edge device. In this paper, we demonstrate how knowledge transfer and adversarial training can be used to create efficient models capable of running on edge devices using a corpus of only several hours. We apply these concepts to create a voice synthesiser for te reo Māori (the indigenous language of Aotearoa New Zealand) for a non-speaking user and ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi (the indigenous language of Hawaiʻi) for a legally blind user, thus creating the first high-quality text-to-speech tools for these endangered, central-eastern Polynesian languages capable of running on a low powered edge device.