Feature Request: Allow for equivalent/alternative words

[mwoodsy]

When calculating WER, MER, and WIL it would be nice to allow for equivalent or alternative words. For example:

Hi, This is Ann.
Hi, This is Anne.

The cost is 21 dollars
The cost is $21.00 dollars
The cost is $21
The cost is twenty one dollars

I'm going to go for a walk
I'm gonna go for a walk

could all be equivalent

A method to implement something like this could be to allow for something like this syntax [<alternatives>] in the ground truth, for example:

Hi this is [Anne|Ann] I'm [going to|gonna] go for a walk

[nikvaessen]

I think that you should use the pre-processing transform API to solve these cases by normalizing all text to a single alternative.