Numeral Formatting

Transcription:Batch Real-Time Deployments:All

Speechmatics ensures readability of your transcripts & enables effective post-processing by identifying & correctly formatting numbers, dates, currencies and other important entities.

info

Speechmatics provides these formatted entities by default in the transcription for all outputs (JSON, text and SRT).

Additional Entity Information

Additional metadata about these entities can be requested via the API including the spoken words without formatting and the entity class that was used to format it.

Supported Languages

Additional numeric entity metadata is supported in the following languages:

Cantonese
Chinese Mandarin (Simplified and Traditional)
Dutch
English
French
German
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Norwegian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish

Enable entity metadata

Changing enable_entities to true will enable a richer set of metadata in the JSON output only. By default, this is false.

After enabling the parameter the JSON transcript will have the following changes:

A new type named entity will be in the JSON output when a numeric entity is formatted, in addition to word and punctuation.
- For example: "1.99" would have a type of entity and a corresponding entity_class of decimal
The entity will contain the full written form text in the content section.
- The content can include spaces, non-breaking spaces, and symbols (e.g., $/£/%)
- For example: content: "19th of January 2023"
A new output element, entity_class. This provides more detail about how the entity has been formatted. A full list of entity classes is provided below.
The start and end time of the entity will span all the words that make up that entity.
The entity JSON also contains two ways that the content can be output:
- spoken_form - Each spoken word of the entity, unformatted. Each individual word has its own start time, end time, and confidence score.
  - For example: "one", "million", "dollars"
- written_form - The same output as within the entity content, split out as separate words.
  - For example: "$1", "million"

Configuration example

Here is an example configuration file which enables the output of additional entity metadata:

{
  "type": "transcription",
  "transcription_config": {
    "language": "en",
    "enable_entities": true
  }
}

Entity classes

The following values of entity_class can be returned. Entity classes indicate how the numerals are formatted. In some cases, the choice of class can be contextual and the class may not be what was expected (for example "2001" may be a "cardinal" instead of "date"). Entity classes may be added or removed in future.

Please note that existing behaviour for English where numbers from zero to ten are output as words is unchanged (except where they are output as a decimal/money/percentage).

Entity Class	Formatting Behaviour	Example of Spoken Word Form	Written Form Example
alphanum	A series of three or more alphanumerics, where an alphanumeric is a digit less than 10, a character or symbol	a z triple seven five four	AZ77754
cardinal	Any number greater than ten is converted to numbers. Numbers ten or below remain as words. Includes negative numbers	nineteen	19
decimal	A series of numbers divided by a separator	eighteen point one two	18.12
fraction	Small fractions are kept as words ("half"); complex fractions are converted to numbers separated by "/"	three sixteenths	3/16
ordinal	Ordinals greater than 10 are output as numbers	forty second	42nd
money	Currency words are converted to symbols before or after the number (depending on the language)	twenty dollars	$20
percentage	Numbers with a percent have the percent converted to a % symbol	two hundred percent	200%
date	Day, month and year, or a year on its own. Any words spoken in the date are maintained (including "the" and "of")	fifteenth of January twenty twenty two	15th of January 2022
time	Times are converted to numbers	eleven forty a m	11:40 a.m.
span	A range expressed as "x to y" where x and y correspond to another entity class	one hundred to two hundred million pounds	100 to £200 million
credit card	A long series of spoken digits less than 10 are converted to numbers. Supports common credit cards	one one one one two two two two three three three three four four four four	1111 2222 3333 4444
telephone	Format common phone numbers	five five five four two nine triple two eight	(555) 429-2228
electronic	Format common websites and email addresses	bob at speechmatics dot com	bob@speechmatics.com
measurement	Format common measurements as short form	ten kilometers per second	10km/s

Language specific output

Each language aims to cover common best pratices for each language for numeral formatting.

Styling

Each language has a specific style applied to it for thousands, decimals and where the symbol is positioned for money or percentages.

For example:

English contains commas as separators for numbers above 9999 (example: "20,000"), the money symbol at the start (example: "$10") and full stops for decimals (example: "10.5")
German contains full stops as separators for numbers above 9999 (example: "20.000"), the money symbol comes after with a non-breaking space (example: "10 $") and commas for decimals (example: "10,5")
French contains non-breaking spaces as separators for numbers above 9999 (example: "20 000"), the money symbol comes after with a non-breaking space (example: "10 $") and commas for decimals (example: "10,5")

Example transcription output

Here is an example of a transcript requested with enable_entities set to true:

content that has "17th of January 2022", including spaces
- The start and end times span the entire entity
- An entity_class of date
- The spoken_form is split into the following individual words: "seventeenth", "of", "January", "twenty", "twenty", "two". Each word has its own start and end time
- the written_form split into the following individual words: "17th", "of", "January", "2022". Each word has its own start and end time

Note:

By default and when speaker diarization is enabled, speaker parameter is added per word within the entity, spoken and written form
When channel diarization is enabled, channel parameter is only added on the results parent within the entity and not included in spoken and written form

   "results": [
    {
      "alternatives": [
        {
          "confidence": 0.99,
          "content": "17th of January 2022",
          "language": "en",
          "speaker": "UU"
        }
      ],
      "end_time": 3.14,
      "entity_class": "date",
      "spoken_form": [
        {
          "alternatives": [
            {
              "confidence": 1.0,
              "content": "seventeenth",
              "language": "en",
              "speaker": "UU"
            }
          ],
          "end_time": 1.41,
          "start_time": 0.72,
          "type": "word"
        },
        {
          "alternatives": [
            {
              "confidence": 1.0,
              "content": "of",
              "language": "en",
              "speaker": "UU"
            }
          ],
          "end_time": 1.53,
          "start_time": 1.41,
          "type": "word"
        },
        {
          "alternatives": [
            {
              "confidence": 1.0,
              "content": "January",
              "language": "en",
              "speaker": "UU"
            }
          ],
          "end_time": 2.04,
          "start_time": 1.53,
          "type": "word"
        },
        {
          "alternatives": [
            {
              "confidence": 1.0,
              "content": "twenty",
              "language": "en",
              "speaker": "UU"
            }
          ],
          "end_time": 2.46,
          "start_time": 2.04,
          "type": "word"
        },
        {
          "alternatives": [
            {
              "confidence": 1.0,
              "content": "twenty",
              "language": "en",
              "speaker": "UU"
            }
          ],
          "end_time": 2.79,
          "start_time": 2.46,
          "type": "word"
        },
        {
          "alternatives": [
            {
              "confidence": 0.97,
              "content": "two",
              "language": "en",
              "speaker": "UU"
            }
          ],
          "end_time": 3.14,
          "start_time": 2.79,
          "type": "word"
        }
      ],
      "start_time": 0.72,
      "type": "entity",
      "written_form": [
        {
          "alternatives": [
            {
              "confidence": 0.99,
              "content": "17th",
              "language": "en",
              "speaker": "UU"
            }
          ],
          "end_time": 1.33,
          "start_time": 0.72,
          "type": "word"
        },
        {
          "alternatives": [
            {
              "confidence": 0.99,
              "content": "of",
              "language": "en",
              "speaker": "UU"
            }
          ],
          "end_time": 1.93,
          "start_time": 1.33,
          "type": "word"
        },
        {
          "alternatives": [
            {
              "confidence": 0.99,
              "content": "January",
              "language": "en",
              "speaker": "UU"
            }
          ],
          "end_time": 2.54,
          "start_time": 1.93,
          "type": "word"
        },
        {
          "alternatives": [
            {
              "confidence": 0.99,
              "content": "2022",
              "language": "en",
              "speaker": "UU"
            }
          ],
          "end_time": 3.14,
          "start_time": 2.54,
          "type": "word"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]

If enable_entities is set to false, the output is as below:

  "results": [
    {
      "alternatives": [
        {
          "confidence": 0.99,
          "content": "17th",
          "language": "en",
          "speaker": "UU"
        }
      ],
      "end_time": 1.33,
      "start_time": 0.72,
      "type": "word"
    },
    {
      "alternatives": [
        {
          "confidence": 0.99,
          "content": "of",
          "language": "en",
          "speaker": "UU"
        }
      ],
      "end_time": 1.93,
      "start_time": 1.33,
      "type": "word"
    },
    {
      "alternatives": [
        {
          "confidence": 0.99,
          "content": "January",
          "language": "en",
          "speaker": "UU"
        }
      ],
      "end_time": 2.54,
      "start_time": 1.93,
      "type": "word"
    },
    {
      "alternatives": [
        {
          "confidence": 0.99,
          "content": "2022",
          "language": "en",
          "speaker": "UU"
        }
      ],
      "end_time": 3.14,
      "start_time": 2.54,
      "type": "word"
    }
  ]
}

Numeral Formatting

Additional Entity Information​

Supported Languages​

Enable entity metadata​

Configuration example​

Entity classes​

Language specific output​

Styling​

Example transcription output​