A speech-to-text-to-speech for use with on-line and real time transmission of speech with a small bandwidth from a source to a destination. A speech is received and broken down to phonemes, which are encoded into series of symbols compatible with communication systems and other than a known symbolic representation of the speech in a known language for being transmitted through communication networks. When received, the series of symbols is decoded to restore the phonemes and for reconstituting a speech according to the phonemes prior to being communicated to a listening party.