Text to Speech of Electronic Documents Containing Ruby: User Requirements

The primary purpose of ruby annotations is to indicate how to pronounce CJK ideographic characters, a practice known as Furigana (see also JLReq terminology ).

In Chinese, ruby annotations such as Pinyin or Bopomofo serve a similar phonetic purpose and can be treated in the same way for text-to-speech: the ruby simply provides pronunciation guidance for the base characters.

In contemporary usage, it is uncommon to attach ruby annotations to all CJK ideographic characters in a given document. Instead, it is more common to attach ruby annotations to only some of the CJK ideographic characters.

Ruby annotations find their application in various contexts, including trade books, newspapers, textbooks, teaching materials, and more, but are rarely utilized in business documents.

Even for simple CJK ideographic characters, ruby annotations may be added for some users who have particular difficulties with CJK ideographic characters (in electronic documents, it is easy to make ruby annotations visible or invisible based on user preferences). Such ruby annotations are called as furigana-added-for-enhanced-accessibility.

Some simple CJK ideographic characters have more than one possible reading and thus require ruby annotations for disambiguation. This is common for names of people and places. For example, 山崎 (a person's name) may be read as YAMAZAKI or YAMASAKI.

If ruby annotations are attached to only some of the CJK ideographic characters in a given document, the first occurrence of a CJK ideographic character or a word composed of such characters may have a ruby annotation, while subsequent occurrences typically do not. This practice assumes that users will learn the correct pronunciation from the first occurrence.

Especially in Japan, ruby annotations are also used to indicate something different from the reading of a CJK ideographic character. Such ruby annotations are referred to as Gikun . Gikun is commonly employed in light novels and comics.

Such semantic use of ruby also occurs in Chinese texts.

Here are some examples of Gikun:

• 敵 とも (where 敵 means 'enemy' and とも means 'friend'). The combination means 'frenemy'.
• 生命 いのち (where the typical reading of 生命 is SEIMEI rather than いのち (INOCHI), both of which mean 'Life')
• 背景 バック (where the typical reading of 背景 is HAIKEI rather than バック (back), an English translation)
• 牛乳 ミルク (where the typical reading of 牛乳 is GYUUNYUU rather than ミルク (milk), an English translation)

Even when Gikun is used for a compound word, it is unlikely to be repeated for later occurrences of the same word. Moreover, different GIKUN may be added for subsequent occurrences of the same word. For example, the next occurrence of 生命 may well be 生命 ライフ where ライフ (life) is an English translation.

Unusual names of people in Japan are typically written using CJK ideographic characters but are pronounced quite differently from the standard reading of these characters. For instance, 男 あだむ is an unusual name, where 男 (usually read as OTOKO) means 'man', and あだむ represents 'Adam' in Kana.

Character names in comics, animations, and light novels can sometimes be extremely challenging to pronounce. Many of the character names in Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba) fall into this category. For example, almost no one can read 不死川 玄弥 as SHINAZUGAWA GENNYA without assistance.

Names of places can also be difficult to read due to historical reasons. For instance, 神居古潭 かむいこたん , 温根沼 おんねとう , 音威子府 おといねっぷ are names of places in Hokkaido (the northern island of Japan). These names are challenging to pronounce because they originated from the Ainu language , which is entirely different from the Japanese language.

In many instances, the first occurrence of an unusual name is accompanied by a ruby annotation, but subsequent occurrences are not.

Interlinear notes resemble ruby annotations in appearance. A note in JLreq introduces interlinear notes as follows:

Such notes frequently appear in Japanese publications, particularly in educational or classical works. They can also be found in Chinese texts.

In the example shown in a figure referenced in the quoted note ("An example of a note in inter lines") , 徳川慶喜 (Tokugawa Yoshinobu) is accompanied by an interlinear note "1837-1913 江戸幕府最後の将軍 " (1837-1913 the last shogun of the Edo shogunate). Other examples are: a modern kana phrase as an interlinear note for a historical kana phrase, a standard Japanese expression as an interlinear note for an expression in a dialect, a modern CJK ideographic character as an interlinear note for a traditional CJK ideographic character, an English text chunk as an interlinear note for a Japanese text chunk, and an official name as an interlinear note for an abbreviated name.

One could argue that HTML ruby elements should not be used for representing interlinear notes (see Kobayashi Sensei's mail in Japanese ). However, it is not difficult to imagine that ruby elements are actually used for representing interlinear notes.

In language textbooks, ruby annotations are at times employed to indicate the pronunciation of foreign phrases written in hiragana or katakana. For example, a Chinese phrase 我去学校 may include ウオ チュー シュエシャオ as a ruby annotation.

A sequence of characters can be accompanied by two ruby annotations, typically consisting of Furigana and either GIKUN or an interlinear note . In an example provided in JLreq ("An example of ruby annotations attached to both sides of the base characters"), 東南 is accompanied by たつみ and とうなん . Here 東南 means 'southeast', with とうなん (TOUNAN) serving as Furigana , and たつみ (TATSUMI) as GIKUN , as 辰巳 (read as TATSUMI ) indicates the same direction as 東南 .

We offer two additional illustrative examples.

In this example, とうよう serves as Furigana , while オリエント is used as Gikun

In this example, おだのぶなが serves as Furigana , while "1534〜82" is presented as an interlinear note .

In this option, both ruby bases and ruby annotations are read aloud (double reading). Many implementations (screen readers, in particular) support this option only. For example, foo bar is read aloud as 'foo bar' or 'bar foo'.

In this option, ruby annotations are read aloud but ruby bases are not. For example, foo bar is read aloud as 'bar'.

In this option, ruby bases are read aloud but ruby annotations are not. For example, foo bar is read aloud as foo.

Small kana characters ゃ , ゅ , ょ , and っ are too small when they appear in ruby annotations. For this reason, instead of these small characters, full-size kana characters や , ゆ , よ , and つ are used in ruby annotations.

However, since full-size kana characters are pronounced differently from small kana, ruby annotations containing full-size kana are read aloud differently.

CSS has a mechanism for overcoming this problem. Value ' full-size-kana ' of the text-transform property as specified in CSS Text converts small kana characters to full-size kana. It is thus possible to use small kana in ruby annotations while rendering them using full-size kana. Text-to-speech engines can provide correct results even when ruby annotations are read aloud.

When attaching a ruby annotation to a compound word consisting of multiple CJK ideographic characters in an HTML or EPUB document, one way is to create a single HTML ruby element for the entire word. However, in some cases, a separate ruby element is created for each CJK ideographic character. For example, to attach the ruby annotation せいめい to the word 生命 (meaning “life” in Japanese), the typical approach is to create a single ruby element for this word. This ruby element may have a single rt element for “せいめい” or two rt elements (one for “せい” and another for “めい”). However, it is not entirely uncommon to see two ruby elements for this word: one for “生” and another for “命”.

Some people argue that creating a ruby element per compound word is better than creating a ruby element for each character in a compound word. They argue that it becomes easier for the text-to-speech engine to maintain a correspondence table between ruby bases and ruby annotations so that subsequent occurrences of the compound word without ruby can be pronounced correctly.

Meanwhile, others argue that there is a good reason to attach ruby annotations to some, but not all, characters in a compound word. For example, consider 佳人 , where 佳 is taught in junior high schools while 人 is taught in the first grade of elementary schools. Therefore, it makse sense to attach a ruby annotation to 佳 only (one ruby element for 佳 and no ruby element for 人 ). Similarly, it is reasonable to attach ruby annotations to the first and third CJK idegraphic characters in 屯田兵 only but not to the second one (thus, two ruby elements).

Although furigana-added-for-enhanced-accessibility is necessary for those readers who have particular difficulties with CJK ideographic characters, it is unnecessary or slightly disturbing for others. If furigana-added-for-enhanced-accessibility is distinguishable from normal furigana, it can be made visible or invisible depending on user preferences. It is thus necessary to standardize a markup mechanism for indicating furigana-added-for-enhanced-accessibility.

In Section 3, we have seen that ruby annotations used as gikun or interline notes should be read aloud differently from the other cases. It is thus necessary to standardize a markup mechanism for clearly indicating ruby annotations used as gikun or interlinear note.

[ SSML ] employs symbol collections (such as IPA and [ JEITA_IT-4006 ]) to represent the sounds of human languages. Phonemic and phonetic pronunciations are conveyed through sequences of these symbols.

[ epub-32 ] allows the use of SSML attributes within XHTML content documents in EPUB publications. In [ epub-33 ], these attributes are relocated to [ epub-tts-10 ]. Meanwhile, the W3C Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group is developing [ spoken-html ], which outlines two potential methods for incorporating SSML attributes into HTML elements.

In Japan, SSML finds extensive application in digital textbooks, adopted by the biggest textbook publisher in Japan. However, it has been noted that attaching SSML attributes to CJK ideographic characters significantly raises authoring costs. In the case of DAISY textbooks in Japan, SSML is not used, as they contain recorded voice. Trade books in Japan do not typically employ SSML either.

PLS ([ PRONUNCIATION-LEXICON ]) enables the use of pronunciation lexicons, which map words to sequences of symbol collections such as those found in IPA or [ JEITA_IT-4006 ].

While SSML attributes are embedded within XHTML content documents in EPUB publications, PLS lexicons in EPUB publications are stored externally to and referenced by XHTML content documents (see Pronunciation Lexicons section in [ epub-tts-10 ]). As of the present, [ spoken-html ] does not offer a mechanism for associationg PLS lexicons with HTML documents.

PLS is a robust tool for rendering unusual names of people and places in text-to-speech applications. In particular, PLS allows every occurrence of a word or phrase to be consistently pronounced, regardless of the presence of ruby annotations. At the time of this writing, PLS is used by at least one digital textbook publisher in Japan.