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Universal-2-TF: All-Neural Text Formatting for Automatic Speech Recognition (arxiv.org)
1 point by TaurenHunter on Jan 17, 2025 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: A single neural system finishes speech transcripts by adding punctuation, capital letters, and written-out numbers and dates, using a quick word-by-word pass followed by a rewriting step. It beat the usual rule-based cleanup on accuracy and speed while making up fewer words.

Abstract · Universal-2-TF: Robust All-Neural Text Formatting for ASR

This paper introduces an all-neural text formatting (TF) model designed for commercial automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems, encompassing punctuation restoration (PR), truecasing, and inverse text normalization (ITN). Unlike traditional rule-based or hybrid approaches, this method leverages a two-stage neural architecture comprising a multi-objective token classifier and a sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) model. This design minimizes computational costs and reduces hallucinations while ensuring flexibility and robustness across diverse linguistic entities and text domains. Developed as part of the Universal-2 ASR system, the proposed method demonstrates superior performance in TF accuracy, computational efficiency, and perceptual quality, as validated through comprehensive evaluations using both objective and subjective methods. This work underscores the importance of holistic TF models in enhancing ASR usability in practical settings.

Yash Khare, Taufiquzzaman Peyash, Andrea Vanzo, Takuya Yoshioka
arXiv:2501.05948 · cs.CL · submitted Jan 10, 2025
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