Hi Scott, As a follow-up to your question about the InfoVox/iVox voices from Assistiveware, you asked:
>> Also just out of interest, if you purchase a multilingual voice for >> example >> polish or whatever language you choose, could you write in english and >> the >> other language voice will then convert the english to say polish or german >> will it? >> It would be kind of nice to be able to say type in english phrases and >> have >> them translated to polish so I could then communicate with my Grandma who >> doesn't speak english all that well. >> Is this possible or is there a program I could download that would do >> this? You could run your text through the Google's Translate page, then read the results with the Polish voice. Google Translate lets you translate either text you type or paste into the Original Text section of their page, or else,translate a web page whose URL address you supply. You can bookmark the settings so that the default buttons are automatically set to translate from English to Polish like this: http://translate.google.com/translate_t?sl=en&tl=pl Then, if you had some English text you wanted to translate into Polish, say in a TextEdit document, you could select and copy it in TextEdit and paste it into the box for original text on the Google Translate web page. So a sequence might run as follows. (Note: I'm going to assume that you have your cursor tracking set to Mouse Cursor Follows VoiceOver Cursor in VoiceOver navigation, and I'll tell you what's different if you don't use this, after the description). In TextEdit: Command+A then Command+C to select and copy your English text Command-tab and use your arrow keys to switch between TextEdit and Safari. In the Google Translate page, use item chooser (VO-keys+I) to select "Original Text" by typing "Or" and pressing enter. VO-keys+right arrow to the text area. Click with your mouse. This means, on a laptop, press the trackpad key. On a full keyboard, with NumPad Commander turned on, you can press "5" on the Number Pad area. Paste in your text with Command+V. VO-keys+right arrow past the popup buttons for selecting/changing the language you translate "from" and "to" till you reach the translate button and press it with VO-keys+space. To navigate to the translated text, use item chooser (VO-keys+I) and type "Pol" then arrow down to "Translation: English Polish" and press enter. VO-keys+down arrow to read the translated text. When you listen to this in VoiceOver with one of the English-speaking voices the accents and stresses are going to sound wrong. Well, they'll sound the way an English speaker would try to pronounce those words based on the way that they're spelled, and with no knowledge of Polish. But if you switched to the InfoVox Polish voice to read the translated text, it would sound like something your grandmother could recognize. If you don't have your mouse cursor set to track your VoiceOver cursor, then you need to route your mouse cursor to your VoiceOver cursor before you "click" into the text box to either start typing or paste in your text. Use VO-keys+Command-F5 to route your mouse cursor to your VoiceOver cursor. On older laptops you also press the FN key with that combination. The key click must be a "real physical click" on a mouse button or trackpad button, or with NumPad Commander's "5" key, and it must be made with your mouse cursor positioned on the text box. VO-space, VO-shift-space, etc. will not work. This is true for other Safari web interactions (like bringing up a links option menu), You can also change the translation "from" and "to" languages using the popup buttons, but if you know that you want to make English to Polish your default translation setting, just bookmark the URL of the page after you've run a translation (with Command-D). The easy way to use the bookmark (if you think you will make frequent use of this page) is to save the bookmark to your Bookmarks Bar folder. The first 9 bookmarks in the Bookmarks bar folder are assigned shortcuts keys (Command-1, Command-2, etc.) in Safari. Normally, we leave the Bookmarks bar hidden, so these items don't show up in addition when we use the item chooser or links chooser menu, but you can toggle the Bookmarks bar on and off with Command-Shift-B. The shortcut combination to go to the first, second, etc. link on the Bookmarks bar works even if the Bookmarks bar is hidden. This was a fun question to answer, and may be of interest to the other language buffs on the list (Simon?). Of course, the Google Translate page is still only a machine translation effort, but it can be quite useful. HTH Cheers, Esther On Friday, June 13, 2008, at 12:35PM, "Scott Rutkowski" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Yeh I understand it's a tts. >I was wondering if there is a translation package so if you had the correct >voice installed for the language you wanted to translate to, is this >possible? > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "David Poehlman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS Xby >theblind" <[email protected]> >Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 8:10 AM >Subject: Re: Other voices for the mac > > >> Infovox you can get as a demo for free and you can also get free demos of >> the voices. This is a tts, not a translation package so what you put in >> is >> what it will try to give you back no matter what the voice language is. >> >>
