Gitex : Acapela strengthens its Speech leadership in the Arabic world.

Gitex, September 25-29 2005 - Dubaï World Trade Centre, Belgium Pavilion, Hall 8 M8-2 Acapela Group, the number one supplier of speech technologies in Europe and the Middle East, announces its participation at Gitex, the international tradeshow for new technologies in the Middle East.

Created to complement Salma, the first high quality Arabic speech synthesis on the market, Acapela will present Youssef, a male Arabic voice that supplements the group's multilingual portfolio which includes 22 languages and 50 voices.

Acapela also announces the availability of its high quality Arabic speech synthesis for Linux. Acapela Telecom, Acapela Mobility and Acapela On Board make it possible to deploy a high quality speech synthesis to a large number of applications developed for Linux-made applications: voice portals, unified messaging, contact centres, talking web, talking dictionaries, educational software, e-learning programmes, Accessibility tools, embedded systems etc.

Finally, Acapela has made its virtual recording studio, Virtual Speaker, available to the Arabic speaking market. This makes it possible to automatically create all voice messages in Arabic, without investing in live recording, and thereby saving resources otherwise devoted to looking for and coordinating speakers and reserving a studio.

It reads any text file out loud and clear, with the rich natural voice of Acapela's High Quality text to speech, and therefore simplifies the creation and updating processes.

Due to an active partnership policy in the Middle East, (Emerging Technologies, Globitel, ATSI, Speechworkers, BhartiTelesoft, Alcatel, Atos Origin, Intervoice or Siemens), Acapela Group has become the leader in speech technologies in the Arabic world. In the strategic Telecommunications field, Acapela Telecom offers a differentiated solution to operators, integrators, software editors, platform manufacturers and service providers.

Among the latest deployments carried out in the Middle East, Acapela and its partner ATSI have equipped the shopping centre, Egyptian City Stars, with a service that allows both residents and on-site shop owners to have their e-mails read out loud over the telephone, thanks to Acapela's speech synthesis.

Acapela Group is also a major player in the accessibility field, due to its partnerships with three companies: Medialog, Nattiq Technologies and Visiotech which develop Arabic screen readers to help people suffering from visual deficiencies to access written information.