Tools for transcribing languages into IPA.
Project description
A library and tool for transliterating orthographic text as IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).
Usage
The principle script for transliterating orthographic text as IPA is epitranscriber.py. It takes one argument, the ISO 639-3 code for the language of the orthographic text, takes orthographic text at standard in and writes Unicode IPA to standard out.
$ echo "Düğün olur bayram gelir" | epitranscribe.py "tur-Latn" dyɰyn oluɾ bajɾam ɟeliɾ $ epitranscribe.py "tur-Latn" < orthography.txt > phonetic.txt
Additionally, the small Python modules epitran and epitran.vector can be used to easily write more sophisticated Python programs for deploying the Epitran mapping tables. This is documented below.
Using the epitran Module
The functionality in the epitran module is encapsulated in the very simple Epitran class. Its constructor takes one argument, code, the ISO 639-3 code of the language to be transliterated plus a hyphen plus a four letter code for the script (e.g. ‘Latn’ for Latin script, ‘Cyrl’ for Cyrillic script, and ‘Arab’ for a Person-Arabic script).
>>> import epitran
>>> epi = epitran.Epitran('tur-Latn')
The Epitran class has only a few “public” method (to the extent that such a concept exists in Python). The most important are transliterate and word_to_tuples:
Epitran.transliterate(text): Convert text (in Unicode-encoded orthography of the language specified in the constructor) to IPA, which is returned.
>>> epi.transliterate(u'Düğün') u'dy\u0270yn' >>> print(epi.transliterate(u'Düğün')) dyɰyn
Epitran.word_to_tuples(word, normpunc=False): Takes a word (a Unicode string) in a supported orthography as input and returns a list of tuples with each tuple corresponding to an IPA segment of the word. The tuples have the following structure:
(
character_category :: String,
is_upper :: Integer,
orthographic_form :: Unicode String,
phonetic_form :: Unicode String,
segments :: List<Tuples>
)
The codes for character_category are from the initial characters of the two character sequences listed in the “General Category” codes found in Chapter 4 of the Unicode Standard. For example, “L” corresponds to letters and “P” corresponds to production marks. The above data structure is likely to change in subsequent versions of the library. The structure of segments is as follows:
(
segment :: Unicode String,
vector :: List<Integer>
)
Here is an example of an interaction with word_to_tuples:
>>> import epitran
>>> epi = epitran.Epitran('tur-Latn')
>>> epi.word_to_tuples(u'Düğün')
[(u'L', 1, u'D', u'd', [(u'd', [-1, -1, 1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 1, -1, -1, 1, 1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 0, -1])]), (u'L', 0, u'u\u0308', u'y', [(u'y', [1, 1, -1, 1, -1, -1, -1, 0, 1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 1, 1, -1, -1, 1, 1, -1])]), (u'L', 0, u'g\u0306', u'\u0270', [(u'\u0270', [-1, 1, -1, 1, 0, -1, -1, 0, 1, -1, -1, 0, -1, 0, -1, 1, -1, 0, -1, 1, -1])]), (u'L', 0, u'u\u0308', u'y', [(u'y', [1, 1, -1, 1, -1, -1, -1, 0, 1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 1, 1, -1, -1, 1, 1, -1])]), (u'L', 0, u'n', u'n', [(u'n', [-1, 1, 1, -1, -1, -1, 1, -1, 1, -1, -1, 1, 1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 0, -1])])]
Using the epitran.vector Module
The epitran.vector module is also very simple. It contains one class, VectorsWithIPASpace, including one method of interest, word_to_segs:
The constructor for VectorsWithIPASpace takes two arguments: - code: the language-script code for the language to be processed. - space: the code for the punctuation/symbol/IPA space in which the characters/segments from the data are expected to reside. The available spaces are listed below.
It’s principle method is word_to_segs:
VectorWithIPASpace.word_to_segs(word, normpunc=False) Word is a Unicode string. If the keyword argument normpunc is set to True, punctuation disovered in word is normalized to ASCII equivalents.
A typical interaction with the VectorsWithIPASpace object via the word_to_segs method is illustrated here:
>>> import epitran.vector
>>> vwis = epitran.vector.VectorsWithIPASpace('uzb-Latn', 'uzb-with_attached_suffixes-space')
>>> vwis.word_to_segs(u'darë')
[(u'L', 0, u'd', u'd\u032a', u'40', [-1, -1, 1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 1, -1, -1, 1, 1, 1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 0, -1]), (u'L', 0, u'a', u'a', u'37', [1, 1, -1, 1, -1, -1, -1, 0, 1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 1, 1, -1, 1, -1]), (u'L', 0, u'r', u'r', u'54', [-1, 1, 1, 1, 0, -1, -1, -1, 1, -1, -1, 1, 1, -1, -1, 0, 0, 0, -1, 0, -1]), (u'L', 0, u'e\u0308', u'ja', u'46', [-1, 1, -1, 1, -1, -1, -1, 0, 1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 0, -1, 1, -1, -1, -1, 0, -1]), (u'L', 0, u'e\u0308', u'ja', u'37', [1, 1, -1, 1, -1, -1, -1, 0, 1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 1, 1, -1, 1, -1])]
(It is important to note that, though the word that serves as input–darë–has four letters, the output contains four tuples because the last letter in darë actually corresponds to two IPA segments, /j/ and /a/.) The returned data structure is a list of tuples, each with the following structure:
(
character_category :: String,
is_upper :: Integer,
orthographic_form :: Unicode String,
phonetic_form :: Unicode String,
in_ipa_punc_space :: Integer,
phonological_feature_vector :: List<Integer>
)
A few notes are in order regarding this data structure: - character_category is defined as part of the Unicode standard (Chapter 4). It consists of a single, uppercase letter from the set {‘L’, ‘M’, ‘N’, ‘P’, ‘S’, ‘Z’, ‘C’}.. The most frequent of these are ‘L’ (letter), ‘N’ (number), ‘P’ (punctuation), and ‘Z’ (separator [including separating white space]). - is_upper consists only of integers from the set {0, 1}, with 0 indicating lowercase and 1 indicating uppercase. - The integer in in_ipa_punc_space is an index to a list of known characters/segments such that, barring degenerate cases, each character or segment is assignmed a unique and globally consistant number. In cases where a character is encountered which is not in the known space, this field has the value -1. - The length of the list phonological_feature_vector should be constant for any instantiation of the class (it is based on the number of features defined in panphon) but is–in principles–variable. The integers in this list are drawn from the set {-1, 0, 1}, with -1 corresponding to ‘-’, 0 corresponding to ‘0’, and 1 corresponding to ‘+’. For characters with no IPA equivalent, all values in the list are 0.
Language Support
Transliteration Languages
Code |
Language (Script) |
|---|---|
aze-Cyrl |
Azerbaijani (Cyrillic) |
aze-Latn |
Azerbaijani (Latin) |
hau-Latn |
Hausa |
ind-Latn |
Indonesian |
jav-Latn |
Javanese |
kaz-Cyrl |
Kazakh (Cyrillic) |
kaz-Latn |
Kazakh (Latin) |
kir-Arab |
Kyrgyz (Perso-Arabic) |
kir-Cyrl |
Kyrgyz (Cyrillic) |
kir-Latn |
Kyrgyz (Latin) |
tuk-Cyrl |
Turkmen (Cyrillic) |
tuk-Latn |
Turkmen (Latin) |
tur-Latn |
Turkish (Latin) |
yor-Latn |
Yoruba |
uig-Arab |
Uyghur (Perso-Arabic) |
uzb-Cyrl |
Uzbek (Cyrillic) |
uzb-Latn |
Uzbek (Latin) |
Language “Spaces”
Code |
Language |
Note |
|---|---|---|
tur-with_attached_suffixes-space |
Turkish |
Based on data with suffixes attached |
tur-without_attached_suffixes-space |
Turkish |
Based on data with suffixes removed |
uzb-with_attached_suffixes-space |
Uzbek |
Based on data with suffixes attached |
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