27.38, Jobs: Japanese; Computational Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology: TTS Linguists, Amazon.com / Ivona Software

Mon Jan 4 18:14:47 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-38. Mon Jan 04 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.38, Jobs: Japanese; Computational Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology: TTS Linguists, Amazon.com / Ivona Software

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Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2016 13:14:42
From: Marco Nicolis [nicolism at amazon.com]
Subject: Japanese; Computational Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology: TTS Linguists, Amazon.com / Ivona Software, Cambridge, United Kingdom

University or Organization: Amazon.com / Ivona Software 
Job Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom 
Web Address: https://www.ivona.com/
Job Title: Japanese TTS Linguists (Cambridge, UK)
Job Rank: Other; TTS Linguist

Specialty Areas: Computational Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology 

Required Language(s): Japanese (jpn)

Description:

Japanese TTS linguist

IVONA Software is one of Amazon’s top notch development centers. IVONA researches, develops and delivers cutting edge multi-language Text to Speech technology, leading in voice quality, accuracy and ease of use.

As part of our development team you will work within the Amazon Digital Products department. This department has developed significant digital businesses including Amazon MP3, Amazon Video on Demand, IMDB, Amazon Fire TV, the Kindle Fire and our recently released Amazon Echo.

IVONA is a team of creative people who successfully combine passion and ambition in creating one of the best speech synthesizers in the world, and now are one of the most visible teams within Amazon where you will get the chance to have a huge influence on making a positive impact on customers all over the globe.

At Amazon, we take pride in building complete end-to-end solutions, staring from researching a problem, implementing the solution, building a scalable and reliable service and ensuring the service is there when you need it.

This position is based at Amazon offices in Cambridge, UK.

As a Computational Linguist you will work alongside Software Developers who are subject matter experts in speech synthesis and related fields. You are expected to have solid knowledge of computational linguistics as well as knowledge of phonetics/phonology. You will be working on a variety of tasks to improve natural language processing of TTS (text-to-speech). You will actively collaborate with Software Developers with linguistic expertise throughout the whole language and voice building process at Ivona/Amazon.

Project duration: 9-18 months, with the strong possibility of turning the position into a permanent one.

The tasks include:

- Normalizing textual resources through regular expressions.
- Creating natural language test cases for natural language processing modules.
- Labeling text with semantic, syntactic and morphological features
- Annotating lexicon entries according to guidelines.
- Validating kana transcriptions for Japanese.
- QA of TTS voices and linguistic data.

Qualifications

- Native speaker of Japanese.
- Degree in Computational Linguistics or similar.
- Solid knowledge of regular expressions.
- Solid knowledge of phonetics and phonology.
- Knowledge of Unix/Linux command line tools.

Preferred Qualifications

- Knowledge of scripting languages (e.g. Perl, Python).
- Familiarity with software version control tools (e.g. Git).
- Ability to create / fix phonetic transcriptions for Japanese.
- Solid communication skills.
- Strong personal interest in learning, researching, and creating new technologies related to foreign languages, linguistics, phonetics, phonology and language technology.
- Comfortable working in a fast paced, highly collaborative, dynamic work environment.

Application Deadline: 29-Feb-2016 (Open until filled)

Web Address for Applications: http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/365656/japanese-tts-linguist 
Contact Information:
	Marco Nicolis 
	Email: nicolism at amazon.com 

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