On Sat 24 Mar, 2018, 7:17 PM Nigel Verity, <[email protected]> wrote:
> It's always annoying when somebody mispronounces your name but I think the > same issue probably exists for some of the episode titles, especially when > acronyms or application/trade names are included. > > For first-language English speakers it's probably not so much of a problem > but HPR has plenty of listeners for whom English is a 2nd language, so > deciphering eSpeak might sometimes not be so easy. Would it be such a big > deal to either request hosts to make their own introductions or, failing > that, find a volunteer with a good speaking voice to pre-record episode > introductions? Since slots are booked in advance it should be possible for > the "announcer" to record them in batches, thereby reducing the burden. > > Beeza > ------------------------------ > We could take this discussion to a new thread, but yes, the eSpeak voice in general is something I've wanted to bring up for some time now. As a second language English speaker, I do find it hard to decipher most of the time. After a few initial weeks of attempting to understand it, I've taken to skipping through it (and missing the summaries) instead. It's not entirely unintelligible, but it's like listening to an out of frequency AM radio station and trying to make sense of it. I'm not that familiar with eSpeak, but perhaps one of the other voices could be worth a try? If I understand this page http://espeak.sourceforge.net/commands.html (-v voice) correctly, there are 7 male voices and 4 female voices included with eSpeak. If one of those works out, it might be an easier switch to implement than moving to a human voice. (lf this is worth considering, we can take this discussion - about the eSpeak voice in general - to a separate thread so as not to sidetrack this one.) NB: just as a frivolous remark, I find it a bit funny that my chosen moniker (Aaressaar) has the opposite problem - someone mentioned on a Community News episode that they couldn't initially figure out how to pronounce it, whereas eSpeak seems to have gotten it immediately! -- Cheers, Aaressaar >
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