I have thought about it, and I am pretty sure that one of the keys to fixing this problem is to not let pronunciation tools be pronounced character-by-character, and that 4-character idioms and especially 2- character compounds should be recorded on their own, since rarely is Mandarin a single character language (at least for dictionary/language tool purposes). I would record those pronunciations and add in software which was prosodic and grammatically sensitive--that is, stressing content/important words and passing quickly over function words like 在. It seems like the English ad French version of Google translate have this intelligence, but Chinese is lacking. I would be happy to help. :P
starcat On Oct 13, 1:56 am, Xi Cheng (Google employee) wrote: > thanks a lot for your feedback about the text-to-speech quality, > Starcat. > > On Oct 10, 9:17 am, Starcat wrote: > > > Realized after I posted this that you can't link to a specific word > > page on Google translate (or I'm missing how to do it). To hear the > > Google audio, you will need to copy and paste the word 大厦 into the > > translator, make it's fromChineseto English, then click the blue > > speaker icon below the character on the left。 > > > On Oct 9, 9:12 pm, Starcat wrote: > > > > I just have to say that the audiopronunciationguide for Mandarin > > >Chineseis pretty awful sounding. It's very robotic and generally > > > unclear. I understand that this is a common problem for online > > > dictionaries with audiopronunciationtools, especially when words are > > > pronounced together in a sentence, but I find that other sites have > > > done well with it (most notably Nciku.com) and Google's English and > > > French pronunciations are not bad. To compare, listen to the Google > > >pronunciationof 大厦 (Dàshà): > > > >http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=&ie=UTF-8&text=%E5%A4%A7%E... > > > > And then thepronunciationfor Nciku (you have to click the green > > > speaker icon for 上海大厦): > > > >http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E5%A4%A7%E5%8E%A6/7220 > > > > Quite a difference. I can't even understand the Googlepronunciation > > > with its robotic slur, but the Ncikupronunciationis exceptionally > > > clear and rhythmically natural. > > > > Improving this feature would greatly complement Google's translation > > > tool for MandarinChinese, which is itself not too bad, and would > > > actually make the service helpful for Mandarin learners. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "General" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-translate-general?hl=en.
