MROBINSON@wash-vax.bbn.com (07/22/89)
Are there any libraries (or other software) out there that translate languages other than English into the phoneme strings the Amiga uses for speech? Does the translator.library shipped in France translate French, the one shipped in Germany translate German, etc? A year or so ago I wrote a "phonemer" for Esperanto in Amiga BASIC, and now that I have a C compiler, I plan to translate the program over to C. Is anyone interested in such a utility? It's likely to be small, like two or three pages, since Esperanto is so phonetic. (If I make it a little bigger, I can get the syllable stresses right, too, since the words are so well structured! I've tried some experiments, and the difference the syllable stress makes is astounding.) My goal with all this is to write a PD program that will let the user define several voices (including the language they speak), that will then read text files and speak them. This utility, it seems to me, could be used for several interesting projects: making an audible book reader, which could take text files for new books; helping language students learn a new language, by letting them type in the dialogs they find in their textbooks, and having the Amiga speak them; and adding speech to games in a simple and international way. The more languages I can figure oute how to phonemize, the more useful (and general) this tool could be. (^ maybe I'll finally learn my native tongue :) So, any interested parties out there want to help me with Italian, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Swedish, Finn, Portuguese, Mexican-sounding Spanish, Black English, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Hindi, Greek, Latin, Arabic (but what is the alphabet, too?), Sanskrit, Middle English, Old English, Hebrew, Mayan...? Thanks, Max mrobinson@wash-vax.bbn.com