EPPS Transcriptions database was done within the scope of the TC-STAR project (FP6-506738) which was sponsored by European commission. The database comprises recordings of members of the European Parliament speaking in the parliamentary plenary sessions (EPPS) as well as recordings of interpreters. Recordings of Spanish Parliament (PARL) are also included to achive a total of 100 speech hours transcribed. Transcription was performed by Applied technologies on Language and Speech, S.L. (ATLAS), from Spain.The owner of the transcriptions is Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, from Spain.

EPPS transcriptions consist of 61:53 hours of speech of members of the European Parliament speaking in the parliamentary plenary sessions as well as recordings of interpreters. PARL transcriptions consist of 38:24 hours of speech of members of the Spanish Parliament speaking in the Spanish Parliament and Spanish Congress during plenary sessions and commissions. The total amount of audio recordings including non transcribed sections is 143:10 hours

Each speech file (extension .WAV) has an accompanying file with the transcription in xml format (extension .TRS).

TC-STAR: European Parliament Plenary Session Transcription Guidelines

Transcriber 1st pass: Initial markup

-          Check audio file is OK

-          Creation of skeleton transcription file with date, time and program name

-          Initial segmentation (according to detailed rules below)

-          Mark speaker changes

-          Mark changes in background conditions

-          Transcription of all speech segments (if transcription is not available)

-          Spell check

Note: Apart from the distinction translator – original speaker (in debating hall), background conditions are not annotated.

Transcriber 2nd pass (recommended resolution: 30 seconds)
-          Transcription of  all speech segments
-          Transcription of (frequent) noises
-          Verification of uncertain orthography (specially names)
-          Spell check
 

Transcriber 3rd pass, Validation (recommended resolution: 10 seconds or smaller)

-          Verification of transcription
-          Fine tune boundary times
-          Spell check
 

Speaker information

Speaker name is annotated as present in directory web page of the EPPS. Interpreters are indicated by their name if know accompanied by the name of the politicians they are translating. Unknown original speakers (politicians) are denoted as "speaker#1", "speaker#2", ... for unknown interpreters "interpreter#1", "interpreter#2", ...  is used. The name of the speaker is added to the name of the interpreter.

Recording platforms and signal processing

The recordings are made by internet reception and satellite reception from Europe by Satellite. Satellite recordings were decoded and audio streams resampled to WAV files. Internet recordings were provided as RealMedia streams. Recordings were not processed in any way, including Plenary Session pauses and segments of untranslated speech (language different from target language). The “Day's schedule of EbS" to select the raw segments of a Plenary Session. The audio signals transcribed are WAV files with format 16 KHz, PCM, 16 bits, single channel. RealMedia streams were converter to WAV files using WinAmp and RealPlayer software with “Tara Audio Video Plugin for WinAmp”.

Availability

This database is commercially available.

Information

asuncion.moreno@upc.edu

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