Is Prosody Lost in Translation? Fine-Grained Cross-Lingual Prosody Similarity Across Languages

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2608.27848v1
• Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2026 02:36:21 GMT
• Title: Is Prosody Lost in Translation? Fine-Grained Cross-Lingual Prosody Similarity Across Languages
• Abstract summary: We present the first cross-lingual analysis of prosody using multilingual dubbing data across English-German, English-Spanish, and English-French language pairs.<n>Our analysis reveals inherent cross-lingual correlations in prosodic structure between certain languages.
• Score: 14.018902035486375
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Prosody plays an important role in speech translation, conveying information such as emphasis, emotion, and intent beyond lexical content. However, despite recent progress in expressive speech-to-speech translation (S2ST), little is known about how prosodic patterns are similar/different across languages. Understanding these cross-lingual similarities and differences is crucial for effectively incorporating prosody into expressive S2ST systems. In this work, we present the first fine-grained cross-lingual analysis of prosody using multilingual dubbing data across English-German, English-Spanish, and English-French language pairs. We analyze the similarity of pitch, energy, and temporal feature patterns between source and target speech and investigate the linguistic and alignment-related factors affecting this similarity. Our analysis reveals inherent cross-lingual correlations in prosodic structure between certain languages. The findings provide important insights into the transferability of prosody across languages and offer empirical guidance for future expressive speech-to-speech translation systems.

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