Paper ID: 2411.07111

Building a Taiwanese Mandarin Spoken Language Model: A First Attempt

Chih-Kai Yang, Yu-Kuan Fu, Chen-An Li, Yi-Cheng Lin, Yu-Xiang Lin, Wei-Chih Chen, Ho Lam Chung, Chun-Yi Kuan, Wei-Ping Huang, Ke-Han Lu, Tzu-Quan Lin, Hsiu-Hsuan Wang, En-Pei Hu, Chan-Jan Hsu, Liang-Hsuan Tseng, I-Hsiang Chiu, Ulin Sanga, Xuanjun Chen, Po-chun Hsu, Shu-wen Yang, Hung-yi Lee

This technical report presents our initial attempt to build a spoken large language model (LLM) for Taiwanese Mandarin, specifically tailored to enable real-time, speech-to-speech interaction in multi-turn conversations. Our end-to-end model incorporates a decoder-only transformer architecture and aims to achieve seamless interaction while preserving the conversational flow, including full-duplex capabilities allowing simultaneous speaking and listening. The paper also details the training process, including data preparation with synthesized dialogues and adjustments for real-time interaction. We also developed a platform to evaluate conversational fluency and response coherence in multi-turn dialogues. We hope the release of the report can contribute to the future development of spoken LLMs in Taiwanese Mandarin.

Submitted: Nov 11, 2024