2016-10-23 10:08:31

Hello,

Lately I've been learning how to write in hangeul with the computer, and I'm glad 'cause I'm able to do this now without any problem.

However when trying to make some Sapi4 voices to read what I type in, they're silent. But, I remember that the end user license agreement for the japanese and korean L&H voices are written in such a way that, the voices recognice some rare characters such as accented letters and other simbols, just like this: ¾û¡¶®«.

I'm not sure if it will take some effect, it was just a random example to clarify the subject.

So, my question is:

Does anyone know how to convert the hangeul (한글) or other asian writing languages into this special simbols, so that the voices I have installed on my computer can work with these languages?

Thank you!

Kind regards.

2016-10-23 18:44:48

Those are not letters, those are characters that English tts voices simply can't translate as typical symbols, so they interpret them into a way that makes it sound like a bunch of specialized characters. The Japanese and Korean license agreements would be written in those languages, nothing more, unless it was maybe English. English synthesizers are always silent when reading hangul, and if your computer displays Japanese properly, they only come up as symbols and nonsense characters unless you have a Japanese tts installed. There's no way to convert the writing into these symbols because there's nothing to convert.

Discord: clemchowder633

2016-10-24 03:16:21

But it's quite weird because as you say, when typing in japanese or korean those voices are silent; for example, I have a sapi4 Eloquence voices in japanese, korean and chinese. Then if I type some characters nothing happens. However, I remember that when I tested the new Eloquence from Code Factory, I could write in those three asian languages; it's like they had made something so that the asian languages might work.

So, if there's not a way to convert those characters into the proper ones, what can I do?

Thanks for your answer!

PS: I can paste a piece of demo of Eloquence or the EULA I'm talking about in korean if that can help.

2016-10-24 16:51:13

I had the same thing happen with me when I wanted the Zhengdu screen reader to read the Chinese it is normally made to read. One of my Chinese students thought it might have something to do with my default system language being English instead of Chinese. This problem continues even if I have a chinese language pack installed. I thought this was a Zhengdu problem, but maybe it could be something deeper. As for changing characters in to a romanized alphabet such as pinyin for Chinese, I think my school where I work uses something for this when they create the class student lists with pinyin next to the characters for the names, but I am not sure, and I can't tell you what it is if they do. I only assume it is a computer because Chinese hansi cannot fully show the sounds of Tibetan, and whatever it did really messed up the names of 2 students. I would hope a person would have done a little more research, especially when the names of these people came out to something like 4 characters.

2016-10-24 19:15:30

If you want to use English synthesizers to read and write Asian languages, you're out of luck... you're going to need a TTS voice that is specifically designed to work with those languages. Keep in mind that the languages you are talking about all have different writing systems.
Arcadia, about your problem... your system locale may have to be set differently. Installing a language pack doesn't automatically make it display correctly, especially if using programs that are made specifically from china like Zhengdou, which may not be able to process unicode characters. Try switching your system locale.
As to the romanizing subject, I highly doubt that there is a program obtainable by the average guy to convert characters into romanization automatically, because again, remember that hangul, the three Japanese alphabets, and the chinese writing system, both traditional and simplified are different from each other, and Chinese especially has thousands upon hundreds of thousands of characters built up over 5000 years of written history. And Chinese names with four characters actually are a thing, so it may not be an actual mistake on the part of either the computer program or the person doing the romanizing... but I don't know how much Chinese you actually speak, so won't make any assumptions of how much you know or don't. haha. I speak four dialects of Chinese as well as Japanese and Korean, so I'm not spouting hot air... at least, not too much of it, anyway. I'm not an expert, just someone who was lucky enough to be able to speak them.

Discord: clemchowder633

2016-10-25 02:49:55 (edited by HummingBirdGuy 2016-10-25 02:53:48)

Hello,

No, I'm not totally brainless hahaha. Well, let's be more clear this time:

What I want to achieve is, to make Eloquence's voices read chinese, korean or japanese texts withing their corresponding languages.
For this, I've gotten some Eloquence Sapi4 voices which can do the job, and inside the program folder they have the demo files for all supported languages. When I play the korean demo, yes it reads it in korean with no issues; same with japanese and chinese. Note that the demo is in plain text.

So when I write in hangeul and try to write those characters using these voices, they read it like it were actually english text, specially the chinese voices; like the first thing you were thinking me to do but in reverse.
The same thing happens with L&H voices, except that they don't have a demo text but just the license agreement.

Therefore, I consider that it's a little bit crazy to include a voice pacage if you aren't even able to set their languages up, but this should have some reason...

I thought there was a manner to use these voices, but now I'm starting to give up.

Regards.

2016-10-25 10:53:57

at Assault_freak, I didn't know changing the system locale would change whether a screen reader would work. I'll have to try that, now that I paid a pile of money to make my nvda speak with vocalizer voices. sad I wish I could speak at least some of any Chinese dialect, but I didn't think I would ever be coming to China to work until, this June, so my knowledge, though quickly growing is almost nonexistent. I hope to learn lots, but unfortunately for anyone I will try to practice with when I go back to the states, my Chinese will reek of the province where I work. lol

2016-10-25 17:34:46

Hahahaha. I hear you there! I tend to soak up any local accent whenever I speak with anyone from there for more than an hour on end... either a blessing or a curse to be able to pick it up that fast, depends on how you look at it. lol

Discord: clemchowder633