18. A speech encoding/decoding system comprising: a recognition section configured to recognize character information from an input speech signal; a detection section configured to detect first prosody information from said input speech signal; an encoding section configured to encode said character information and said first prosody information to code data; a transfer/storage section configured to transfer or store said code data acquired by said encoding section; a decoding section configured to decode said transferred or stored code data to said character information and said first prosody information; a plurality of synthesis unit codebooks storing second prosody information prepared from speech data of different speakers; a controller configured to select one of said synthesis unit codebooks in accordance with one of said first prosody information and a specified type of a synthesized speech by computing error between the first prosody information and the second prosody information and selecting from said synthesis unit codebooks a synthesis unit codebook which minimizes the error; and a synthesis section configured to synthesize a speech signal using said character information and the selected one of said synthesis unit codebooks.
18. A speech encoding/decoding system comprising: a recognition section configured to recognize character information from an input speech signal; a detection section configured to detect first prosody information from said input speech signal; an encoding section configured to encode said character information and said first prosody information to code data; a transfer/storage section configured to transfer or store said code data acquired by said encoding section; a decoding section configured to decode said transferred or stored code data to said character information and said first prosody information; a plurality of synthesis unit codebooks storing second prosody information prepared from speech data of different speakers; a controller configured to select one of said synthesis unit codebooks in accordance with one of said first prosody information and a specified type of a synthesized speech by computing error between the first prosody information and the second prosody information and selecting from said synthesis unit codebooks a synthesis unit codebook which minimizes the error; and a synthesis section configured to synthesize a speech signal using said character information and the selected one of said synthesis unit codebooks. 25. The system according to claim 18, wherein said controller is configured to generate and transfer or store select information indicating the specified type of a synthesized speech to select the one of said synthesis unit codebooks in accordance with the select information.