Voice Recognition Breaking News

LERNOUT & HAUSPIE SPEECH PRODUCTS OFFERS AWARD-WINNING REALSPEAK SOFTWARE FOR MOBILE DEVICES: L&H™ REALSPEAK™ COMPACT SDK NOW GENERALLY AVAILABLE

In addition to a high-quality, natural-sounding text-to-speech synthetic voice, L&H's new standard for synthesized speech brings ease of use, convenience and safety to the world's mobile and automotive markets

IEPER, BELGIUM and BURLINGTON, MASS. - August 21, 2001 - Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV (OTC: LHSPQ) ('L&H' or 'the Company'), a world leader in speech and language technology, products and services, today announced that its Speech and Language Technologies Division (SLT) has made the L&H™ RealSpeak™ Compact SDK (Software Development Kit) generally available. This new member of the award-winning L&H™ RealSpeak™ family makes high-quality, natural-sounding text-to-speech (TTS) technology available for a broad spectrum of electronic devices and vertical markets. Applications for this advanced software include mobile devices, such as PDA's (Personal Digital Assistants) and PDT's (Personal Digital Terminals), and handheld computers. The new SDK also empowers numerous vehicle-based information solutions, such as in-vehicle telematics and car navigation systems, offering drivers improved comprehensibility and overall quality of these systems' synthetic voices.

A reduced footprint allows the L&H™ RealSpeak™ Compact SDK to speech-enable virtually any application designed for a standard mobile device, such as a PDA running on the Microsoft® Windows® CE operating system or Linux® platform. The software converts several types of written text format, ranging from e-mail to currencies, dates, or web pages, into high-quality, natural-sounding speech. Special text pre-processors generate accurate pronunciation of e-mail addresses, URL's, and date and time formats. In addition, the L&H™ Application Programming Interface (API) enables application developers and system integrators to easily and rapidly build a user-friendly speech interface into their applications.

In November 1998, L&H introduced the first version of L&H™ RealSpeak™. Today, L&H continues to be one of the leading companies offering high-quality TTS for the speech and language technology market. L&H™ RealSpeak™ is available in 18 languages and is utilized by more than 300 customers worldwide. The L&H™ RealSpeak™ Compact SDK is now available in U.S.-English. The languages Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, French and others are scheduled for later this year.

Robert Bury, director of product management, commented: "Ease of use and a natural operating experience for the end user are key performance features for successful mobile applications. For automotive information products and services in particular, a top-quality speech output is essential for safety and comfort. Our new L&H RealSpeak Compact SDK allows PDA manufacturers, mobile CRM systems integrators, car navigation and telematics service providers, and many others to incorporate the high-quality, natural-sounding TTS required for today's solutions."

Markets that benefit from using L&H™ RealSpeak™ Compact SDK are:

Automotive: speech technology provides hands-free and eyes-free access to information from within the vehicle
Enterprise: voice-enables applications for the mobile workforce that wishes to access business-critical information from almost any location
Mobile learning: enhances interactive learning, such as foreign language programs
Mobile games: enhances a player's interactivity with the game
Industrial: eases the direct delivery and retrieval of data from the factory floor to and from information management systems

Peter Hauser, L&H's vice president and general manager, international and automotive said: "With the launch of L&H™ RealSpeak™ Compact SDK, L&H once again demonstrates its commitment to developing best-of-breed speech technologies and sets yet another new standard for synthesized speech for embedded markets. In addition to the ASR1600 and Distributed Speech Recognition engines, which enable effortless and intuitive voice-controlled access to data and devices, L&H now offers its renowned text-to-speech technology, L&H™ RealSpeak™, for the mobile and automotive markets." Mr. Hauser added: "For years, L&H has led the TTS market for mobile devices, and now we are taking it to a higher level of performance."

Detailed technical and sales information about L&H™ RealSpeak™ Compact SDK can be found at the L&H web site www.lhsl.com.

About L&H™ RealSpeak™

L&H™ RealSpeak™ is Lernout & Hauspie's advanced text-to-speech technology (TTS) that can generate nearly human sounding synthesized speech. It is used in a wide variety of advanced applications, from the creation of voice portals to speech-enabling virtual newscasters. Typical markets for deploying L&H™ RealSpeak™ include: banking, financial, telecommunications, call center and media industries. L&H™ RealSpeak™ technology supports over 5 operating systems and is currently available in 18 languages: US and UK English, German, French, Dutch & Belgian Dutch, Castilian and Mexican Spanish, Italian, European and Brazilian Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Cantonese & Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. The L&H™ RealSpeak™ TTS engine has already received a number of industry awards in recognition of its superior technology and capabilities. The engine won in the Web software category of the Computing Awards for Excellence 2000 run by VNU Business Publications and the "Best Speech Technology" category at VOICE Europe 99. Other awards include SpeechTEK's "Peak Performance Awards," and the "Best of CTI Expo Spring 1999" Award.

About Lernout & Hauspie

L&H is a global leader in advanced speech and language solutions for vertical markets, computers, automobiles, telecommunications, embedded products, consumer goods and the Internet. The company is making the speech user interface (SUI) the keystone of simple, convenient interaction between humans and technology, and is using advanced translation technology to break down language barriers. The company provides a wide range of offerings including: customized solutions for corporations; core speech technologies marketed to OEMs; end user and retail applications for continuous speech products in horizontal and vertical markets; and document creation, human and machine translation services, Internet translation offerings, and linguistic tools. L&H's products and services originate in four basic areas: automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), search and retrieval and audio mining and text-to-text (translation). For more information, please visit L&H on the World Wide Web at www.lhsl.com.