Comments on: Yet Another Text To Speech program

Yet Another Text To Speech program

daninnj — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:42:25 -0800

Oddcast's Text To Speech Demos let you type in words in 14 different languages. Hear thick accents if you enter English or learn how to pronounce that word you always say wrong in Spanish.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:16:42 -0800

Fuck: Audrey's annoyed, Clair is mad, and Crystal wants it.

By: Listener

Listener — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:41:21 -0800

If you move your mouse pointer, she is like a cat looking at cheese. And that's weird when she speaks with a male voice. And when s/he pronounces Jabès.

By: Listener

Listener — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:43:40 -0800

Oh, and it thinks Koreans can pronounce a Z sound. Wrong. Should be a DJ sound.

By: Heywood Mogroot

Heywood Mogroot — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:51:04 -0800

ドーアはあかっぽい not bad for the Japanese voices. I pretty much think machine translation is going to be the next internet-like "big thing" in technology/innovation.

By: Heywood Mogroot

Heywood Mogroot — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:54:38 -0800

間もなく、ドーアが締まり生ます。ご注意ください (couldn't resist)

By: Poagao

Poagao — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:16:24 -0800

It would be nice if they didn't use a mute woman.

By: undule

undule — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:42:40 -0800

I am strangely aroused.

By: signal

signal — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 01:26:28 -0800

The chilean voice is pretty close, actually, though they didn't record "huevón", so it has no real world applications.

By: rxrfrx

rxrfrx — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 03:44:07 -0800

They have "Chilean" but only Mandarin and no Cantonese? Jeez

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:04:59 -0800

I pretty much think machine translation is going to be the next internet-like "big thing" in technology/innovation. Yeah, people were saying that in the early 50s. Recognizing words and parsing sentences isn't hard, but figuring out things like what the author's trying to say is a bitch and a half. And it turns out you can't translate well if you don't know what the author's trying to say. There's a lot of examples that linguists throw around, but my favorite is boku wa unagi da, which can mean "Me, I'm an eel" in Japanese but is also a perfectly good way of ordering eel in a restaurant. If you don't understand the intent behind it, you can't tell how to translate it. And computers, so far, are lousy at understanding intent.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:58:03 -0800

I pretty much think machine translation is going to be the next internet-like "big thing" in technology/innovation. What nebulawindphone said. I am quite confident this is not going to happen in my lifetime, if by "machine translation" you mean translation equivalent to what human translators produce. If you mean "crappy half-assed versions that an ape with a dictionary could produce," we've already got that.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:58:32 -0800

Hell, I forgot what I was originally going to say: [this is good]!

By: RokkitNite

RokkitNite — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 06:17:58 -0800

If you don't understand the intent behind it, you can't tell how to translate it. And computers, so far, are lousy at understanding intent. Yes, but clearly there will be plenty of situations where the context is already present. To take your eel example, if you said boku wa unagi da over the phone to an acquaintance in the middle of a conversation about MMORPGs, they might well be confused. Approximate computer translations for things like directions will doubtless become more common, because the machine doesn't need to figure it all out since there are still two humans at either end. As long as the interlocutors steer clear of richly idiomatic flourishes, I imagine it would make a pretty workable (although less accurate) substitute for human intermediaries. In stuff like game localisation, you could probably get away with running the less text-dependent ones through a sophisticated auto-translator, then have a native speaker do a quick edit to naturalise it, deducing any textual gaps from the game's context. I've no doubt it will have lots of powerful applications.

By: CitrusFreak12

CitrusFreak12 — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 06:54:20 -0800

Damn. Apparently there is a limit. I can't do it anymore. :( Fun while it lasted, though.

By: Milkman Dan

Milkman Dan — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 07:01:46 -0800

Yes PLEASE! I love text-to-speech. I have ever since owning the TI-99a with "voice modulator." I've also been using the Text-to-Speech demo that's been up in AT&T labs website for years. This version lets you DOWNLOAD the spoken results, which leads to endless hours of fun. Example? Before my girlfriend became my wife, I made an extraordinarily complex scavenger hunt for her birthday (which was also our six month dating anniversary). It began with this introductory mission briefing, recorded using these AT&T voices. The recording itself was one of my first forays into digital recording, and I had a blast making this. It was hidden on a CD under her bed. She was instructed to be in her room at 1:00 pm and wait for a phone call. I had a stranger call her and say only, "Look under your bed." She put the CD in, and I'm fairly certain that hearing the synthetic digital British accent giving her instructions was far more entertaining than it would have been if I'd just faked the accent myself. I LOVE text-to-speech.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:14:47 -0800

The Oddcast lady's eyes go down too low... she looks creepy.

By: Wilder

Wilder — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:14:42 -0800

Having Jorge in Castillian say !Me cago en la leche! ( I know it's puerile, so what!) is hilarious. I swear it's the actor who does the audio guides to the Prado, with a beautifully formal accent and intonation saying rude things. Oh Thank God it's Friday and this week is over. Highly entertaining...

By: cb

cb — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 16:17:30 -0800

CitrusFreak12 - just delete your cookies from oddcast.com and vhost.oddcast.com, and you'll be allowed back in.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:36:00 -0800

The Clair voice closely approaches Diane Rhem.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:59:21 -0800

Milkman Dan: One word: Awesome.

By: maudlin

maudlin — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 05:58:17 -0800

Pierre, the French Canadian, didn't pronounce "chalice" properly, but "tabernacle" was spot-on. Awesome, nonetheless.

By: CitrusFreak12

CitrusFreak12 — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 12:44:02 -0800

CitrusFreak12 - just delete your cookies from oddcast.com and vhost.oddcast.com, and you'll be allowed back in. Oh yeah, d'oh. Good idea. Thanks.

By: signal

signal — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 13:56:38 -0800

Machine translation is a sorry, sorry joke, and I challenge one and all to prove me wrong.