P.M. BRIEFING : Aussie Computers to Say G’Day

SYDNEY, Australia — A state-owned company plans to come to the rescue of Australians who object to talking to computers with American accents.

Communications firm OTC said today it will spend $193,000 to develop a speech simulator with an Australian accent.

Synthesized speech systems are used to help people through such chores as booking airline reservations, making university registrations and contributing to telephone opinion polls.

OTC spokesman Peter Wright said current voice reproduction systems were generally of poor quality and tended to have strong American accents.

Linguists at Sydney’s Macquarie University have been contracted to produce a mathematical representation of the Australian accent for transfer to software that could then be used by a computer chip OTC is designing.