[Suggestion] Vocabulary text-to-speech is so good

Support & Feedback Forum
1

Hi,

The new feature that I really love is Text-To-Speech in Vocabulary page. It’s exactly what I’ve wished to have in this site. Thank you for your effort to make this system get even better constantly.

Many times I found a great article or webblog that I’m very interested in, but it usually doesn’t provide a audio on it. What I can do is just only read a text without a audio speech. And I believe that listen to the audio that have the same content as the article will have learner improve speaking and listening skill dramatically. You’ve already have a very nice Text-To-Speech technology in Vocabulary page, it would be great if the technology appear in Lesson pages, too.

I’ve known that you have countless jobs to fixed for making this site be more stable and convenient. And you do your best for it. I’m appreciated that. I just hope that it would happen in a foreseeable future.

2

Hi Mark, using the Google Text to Speech API is limited to 100 characters ( The Unofficial Google Text-To-Speech API | TechCrunch ), so probably, I’m not sure, but think that your request is not possible to realize now. If you are open to use third party commercial software, and the language you are interested is English, I recommend you try the software from the page http://www.ivona.com/. You will be able to transfer to voice any text you find on the Internet and even record it to mp3 file. I think the quality of voices are much better than these on Google, especially these added recently. Unfortunately they have only English and Polish voices, so it’s not for all LingQ learners

3

I prefer this one for French, German, Russian and Japanese: Text To Speech in a Variety of Languages and Dialects Voices. The Google TTS seems to have some way to go yet, although I like to use it for translations.

4

Oh I’m misunderstanding about the API he used. I thought they bought text-to-speech technology from a third party company, so using the API as much as possible will be more worthwhile than using merely in vocabulary page.

Thank you for your information, Gregloby, Skyblueteapot. I will try it right now!

5

I must be blind. I cannot see WHERE I am to click on a flashcard to access this feature that you-all are talking about. (text to speech). My flashcards look exactly like they always have.

6

You should see a speaker icon beside the term on the flashcard. If you are using Firefox and can’t see it, try refreshing your browser a few times.

7

@ Jingle…
Me too. I have refreshed (F5) the flashcard a dozen times or more. I made sure I was looking at one of the supported languages (French), and I made new Flashcards in case it was not retroactive. All to no avail. All I have noted is that the ‘oops’ ‘got it’ buttons are to the left rather than in the middle where they used to be. Using FF 3.6.10

8

That’s very strange. I have the same version of FF and I see it fine. Here’s a screen shot http://screencast.com/t/NmJlZDZkNj. It does only show on the front of the card. What do you see on the front?

9

Whoops - I’m not blind, just empty-headed. I had my flashcards set so that only the phrase showed on the front. I changed it to showing the term and I get the text to speech feature. (I use IE, BTW.) Thanks, again.

10

I had exactly the same problem. Whoops :slight_smile:

11

Hey, it’s working in Russian now! I don’t know why it didn’t before, maybe I needed to refresh something cached.

It does sound a bit like a robot with a sore throat, but that’s Google’s fault not LingQ’s.

12

I’m glad it’s working for everyone! :wink:

13

For iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users, text to speech is available for many languages and is built-in to iOS. You have to enable it under the accessibility settings. The language of the interface will be used (If your phone menus are in Swedish, it will speak Swedish).

Instructions with pictures can be found from this link:

The text in the iLingQ app can’t be selected, so use the web browser instead. Because the LingQ lesson page text can’t be selected, select the QuickLingQ View tab - here the lesson text can be selected and spoken in full. Adjust the speed in the settings.

The quality of the built-in voices is not the best.

For better quality speech, I’ve been impressed with a separate app called iSpeak, which includes a translator.
http://www.future-apps.net/iSpeak/iSpeak.html

14

For iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users, text to speech is available for many languages and is built-in to iOS. You have to enable it under the accessibility settings.

Just as it is in Android, but it is not supported by the app.

15

I just want to add to keke’s post !

He said that the iOS text to speech doesn’t work in ilingq…
It actually works in the app . You just need hold in the right spot to make the selection! I just tested it. It works. I’m on iPhone 4 and I tried it with Korean

16

Thanks Keroro - text in the yellow popups seems to be selectable but t can’t select all the lesson text reliably.

17

The iOS app ClaroSpeak might interest people for reading of text with no audio - it will read large amounts of text, following the words and sentences with highlights and automatically scrolling the content.

18

@Skyblueteapot
Helen, thank you for the link to imtranslator. I tried it for German and it works very well indeed. It does sound much more natural that Googletranslate.

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Another question: How can I highlight webpage text on an Ipad to put into ClaroSpeak? I have looked at this app and text has to be saved and then copied into the ClaroSpeak window in order to have it spoken.

20

First you need to copy the text. For LingQ lessons, I do this from the QuickLingQ view. The QuickLingQ view lets you select the text without activating the LingQ editor. Once the text is highlighted (by pressing long on the text) and copied from the popup menu, switch to Clarospeak and paste the text in.

Switching between two applications is much faster on the iPad if you enable and use multitasking gestures.