The director of the Institute of Automation under Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Tan Tieniu, announced in Beijing Thursday that his fellow scientists have successfully developed voice pattern recognition technology for the Chinese language.

The CAS researchers made new inventions along the lines of related technology created by multi-internationals such as IBM and Intel. They say they can now easily process voice information on about 60,000 Chinese words and also continuous speech in Chinese.

A national appraisal team said that the technology developed bythe CAS researchers was the best of its kind in the world. The CAS institute has applied for eight patents related to the technology, Tan said.

At the news briefing, Ma Songde, vice minister of Science and Technology, said that the Chinese scientists' advances in this field would give the country more market share in products using Chinese-language voice recognition technology.

A high-technology company whose major stake is held by the CAS institute has produced a range of software used for mobile telecommunication, the Internet, stock information databases and remote controls.

Western scientists and futurists regard voice recognition technology as one of the ten which might most influence human society in the first decade of the 21st century.

The Chinese scientists have worked on the technology for 15 years, and their efforts have got support from the nation's high-tech programs.

(People's Daily June 28, 2002)