Text-to-Speech

Ehem... Hello there friends...!

I feel quite lazy today, but I have to write this blog. Now, now, laziness is something that we, humans, feel every now and then (although some people feel this particular feeling more often than the others). One day, my teacher asked to do an assignment which requires me to upload an audio version of a text. I felt quite lazy that day, and decided to read something else. There, I found the answer to my laziness, it is called Text-to-Speech.

This software allows you to automatically convert your text into a speech. You simply need to provide the text and the software will do the rest for you.

TTS or Text-To-Speech is not a single software. In fact, there are many websites and apps that can provide you with such feature. For example, our language learner saviour, Google Translate. Google Translate now has a feature that can give you an audio for your written word, that is a TTS.

To help you find out more information about TTS, I will provide you some links that I acquired from my teacher:

1. http://bit.ly/texttospeech1 for online-based TTS

2. http://bit.ly/texttospeechoffline for downloadable TTS software

Despite the variations of TTS software, they do have some generalized pros and cons. They are:

The pros

1. It is generally easy to use, simply copy your text and paste it to the space provided, and done.

2. It is generally free to use, albeit with some limitations, such as 500 words maximum or 2500 letters maximum.

3. Each software has its own voice character that can provide you with different voices and accents.

The cons

1. Sometimes the limitations are inconsistent, such as 500 words, but your 370 words text can't be used because it passes the limit amount. It is weird, but very common.

2. You cannot use your own voice, so you can't use it in some situations.

3. The downloadable version can be a bit complicated to use.

I know that this article is rather short, but I hope that it can be useful for your teaching and learning activities (especially if you are too lazy to make a speech or look for an audio), cheers!