Human sounding voices crack Google Translate

ZURICH: SVOX, player in embedded speech solutions, has announced that Google has selected SVOX text-to-speech (TTS) technology to assist with pronunciation on its web services Google Translate and Google Dictionary.

SVOX’s natural sounding voices will replace Google’s existing “listen aloud” service in 20 languages.

With Google Translate, users will be able to enhance their language learning abilities by listening to their requested phrase pronounced in a natural and authentic sounding accent. This enables users to not only learn the correct spelling and grammar of a particular phrase in a foreign language, but can also assist with understanding and pronunciation.

With Google Dictionary, users will now have the ability to see how a word should sound phonetically, as well as being able to listen to an accurate pronunciation.

“Our human sounding voices across a wide variety of languages can truly help improve the understanding and the pronunciation of words and phrases,” said Martin Reber, CEO of SVOX. “We’re delighted that Google selected SVOX for this project and these online services show how far text-to-speech technology has progressed in recent years. Mechanical sounding voices are becoming a thing of the past and people can use this technology to help improve learning when working online.”

The same SVOX voices can be downloaded from the Android Market for use in other Google applications including Google Maps Navigation and the on-device version of Google Translate, as well as hundreds of other applications that have a text-to-speech capability.