1. A speech recognition refinement system comprising: a problematic word identifier that divides initial vocabulary words from an initial speech recognition dictionary into problematic words and non-problematic words according to pre-defined identification criteria; a candidate generator that analyzes said problematic words to produce one or more pronunciation candidates for each of said problematic words; an optimization module that performs an optimization process for refining said one or more pronunciation candidates according to one or more optimization criteria, said optimization process generating optimized problematic pronunciations; and a dictionary refinement manager that combines said optimized problematic pronunciations with non-problematic pronunciations of said non-problematic words to produce a refined speech recognition dictionary for use by a speech recognition system.