Optimizing Two-Pass Cross-Lingual Transfer Learning: Phoneme Recognition and Phoneme to Grapheme Translation

This research optimizes two-pass cross-lingual transfer learning in low-resource languages by enhancing phoneme recognition and phoneme-to-grapheme translation models. Our approach optimizes these two stages to improve speech recognition across languages. We optimize phoneme vocabulary coverage by merging phonemes based on shared articulatory characteristics, thus improving recognition accuracy. Additionally, we introduce a global phoneme noise generator for realistic ASR noise during phoneme-to-grapheme training to reduce error propagation. Experiments on the CommonVoice 12.0 dataset show significant reductions in Word Error Rate (WER) for low-resource languages, highlighting the effectiveness of our approach. This research contributes to the advancements of two-pass ASR systems in low-resource languages, offering the potential for improved cross-lingual transfer learning.