Hi Carlene,
You asked:
Does it come with the Nuance voices or do you have to purchase the
separately?
I seem to be picking up a lot of questions about this post, which
includes topics that are discussed towards the end of this admittedly
long post. I'll cc this to the viphone list, since this might be of
interest, and I don't have use of an easily searchable Mail Archive,
since that feature is not set up for that group. The Trippo VoiceMagix
app comes with voices for Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek,
Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and
Thai. They're OK but not great voices, as I commented in the post.
This is not a replacement for a text to speech program with great
voices, especially for languages that are currently available with the
Acapela group voices. If I wanted a good app that reads out text in
languages like English, French, Spanish, German, or Italian I'd buy
"Speak It! Text to Speech" by Future Apps, Inc. for $1.99 and buy the
individual Acapela voices of my choice for $0.99 each through in-app
purchase. See my earlier post in the archives:
<http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg19914.html
>
(Speak It! app to use Infovox voices on the iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad)
You can find Speak It! at:
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/speak-it-text-to-speech/id308629295?
mt=8>
Also, at present you're limited in the length of text you can either
speak or translate. Translation quality is OK, but if you're looking
for well-covered languages like the ones I listed above, you can find
easier to use apps. For example, as I mentioned in my post, even for
Russian, which is not covered by Speak It! (although there is a
Russian Acapela group voice available -- just not as widely for most
apps), I could find an app that had a better voice, and that overall
gave a better translation.
However, the really neat features of this app are the speech
recognition, and the support of other languages that are usually not
as well covered, even with large population bases -- like Chinese and
Hindi -- and particularly those for which text entry in non-Roman
character input is an issue. Again, quality of translation was OK,
but could be better, in the languages I checked.
If you want a translation guide for foreign travel that is accessible,
I found the Lonely Planet Phrasebooks worked with VoiceOver. (This was
based on testing of an older free version of the app -- their Mandarin
Phrasebook that they issued for free in connection with the Summer
Olympics in Beijing. I haven't bought any of their guides. I did
post on the accessibility of the Lonely Planet travel guides a month
and a half ago, again based on the free guide offering that day:
< http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg20111.html
>
(Free (today only) Accessible Lonely Planet Travel Guide apps for 13
cities for iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad)
Also, I've posted about the accessible mPassport guides with "Medical
Translations" section for foreign cities, e.g. from the archives:
<http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg17672.html
>
(Accessible traveler's medical apps for iPhone/iPod Touch: mPassport
Paris and mPassport London, free for limited time)
That list of free guides is now (as of about April 15) up to about 20
currently free and accessible guides. Many of these guides (e.g.
Barcelona, Madrid, Vienna, Florence, Rome, Mexico City, etc.) have
medical translation guides that include spoken phrases, and that work
like the described services for the Paris guide.
All those apps would provide better options for standard languages and
specific traveler services. What Trippo VoiceMagix does that is
unique is its support for other languages that are not well covered by
the iPhone or iPad, and specifically for the transcription into non-
Roman text entry. Even when we get the language rotor in OS 4.0 this
will be an issue. So, I would say that this app is interesting but
with a specific audience. At the risk of repeating myself, I'll quote
from the end of my original post (which is also appended to the end of
this post):
<begin quote>
In conclusion, the Trippo VoiceMagix app will appeal to a specific
minority of VoiceOver users who are interested in language
translation, and who also (at present) have access to the U.S. App
Store. This is obviously a first generation release, with some awkward
features (such as having input text not remain in the window when you
return to the app, or having to fiddle the way you dismiss the
keyboard if you just want to paste in text to the translation window
and have it spoken). However, I think this is a very promising app,
and well worth the $6.99 (or even the $9.99 at which I purchased it).
Note that the default list price really is $24.99, and the $6.99 that
appeared yesterday is not likely to last very long.
<end quote>
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
On Jun 9, 2010,
Hi All,
There's a new translation app just released in the U.S. iTunes
Store named "Trippo VoiceMagix" by Cellictica that just went on
sale for a promotional price of $6.99 (regular price is $24.99). I
don't know how long this price will last, but many current
reductions are timed to the WWDC 2010 this week. The link to the
app is:
Trippo VoiceMagix by Cellictica ($6.99, regularly $24.99):
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trippo-voicemagix/id372332910?mt=8>
I'll paste in the list of features from the app store description,
and then go on to give a detailed description of its usage with
VoiceOver:
<begin excerpt>
FEATURES
- Voice input in US English
- 27 languages supported (Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese Simplified,
Chinese Traditional, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek,
Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian,
Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Pashto, Romanian, Russian, Somali,
Spanish, Serbian, Thai, Urdu)
- Accurate speech recognition by Nuance
- Natural sounding voice output for Chinese, Dutch, French, German,
Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian,
Spanish, Thai
- Adjustable speed for voice output
- Mode selection: Speech-to-speech, Speech-to-translated text only
or Speech-to-recognized text only
- Send the translation by email
- Full license includes upgrades to new features, like additional
languages, sharing features etc.
<end excerpt>
The app is accessible and has some really interesting features for
people who are interested in using their iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad
with different languages, and some unique features that extend use
(with spoken translation and text) to languages that are not even
currently supported on these devices. First, it's powered by the
Nuance engine that is used by Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search,
so one input mode is to speak rather than type in the text you want
translated, and let the app transcribe it by voice recognition.
Because the engine is set to recognize U.S. English, this app
appears to only be available in the U.S. iTunes Store at present; I
checked the Canadian store, and couldn't find the app. Second, you
can have the app speak the text that you entered. (This only works
now if you either typed or spoke your input entry with English
selected with the "Translate from:" button. You can translate to
and from a very large number of language combinations, if you're
just working with text, and don't use the app to speak the
entries.) Third, for thirteen of the twenty-five languages
selectable with the "Translate to" button, you can have the app
speak the translated results. The spoken translations work for a
number of languages with non-Roman scripts, including Chinese (both
simplified and traditional characters), Greek, Hindi, Japanese,
Russian, and Thai. Languages like Hindi are not even supported
otherwise on the iPhone. Nor are (in just text mode) Urdu, Hausa,
Persian, and Pushtu (which are some of the other "Translate to"
options).
Voice recognition mode is pretty good, and fairly fast, since it's
powered by the Nuance engine. The app has a simple layout with a
labeled "Translate from" button, a "Translate to" button, a text
box area for input text to be typed in, and just beside it to the
right, a Microphone button labeled "BTN underscore Mic" for voice
input. There is similarly a translation text box for the results,
and buttons for "Translate" and "Listen".
There are a few VoiceOver specific notes that may be useful.
Although layout is slightly different between portrait and
landscape orientation (with portrait mode having the text entry
input above the translation output, while in landscape mode the
text box for the input language is on the left, and the output
translation on the right), both screens have a button at the bottom
center of the screen: "BTN underscore arrow underscore show".
Tapping this button reveals three buttons at the bottom of the
screen: "Help", "About", and "Settings". "Help" brings up a screen
with a tutorial on how to use the app. The "Settings" button lets
you select the rate of the speech returned from translation, and
also to select the mode of operation. By default, it is set for
speech to speech, which means that you speak your text (in English)
and get spoken results (for languages that support it). However,
you can also just type in your text (in any language), and use the
buttons to run a translation to another language and/or press the
button to have the text spoken. (You can even paste in text to the
translation field and press the button to have it spoken, although
working with these fields without having the keyboard get in the
way is a bit buggy in the initial release.)
The other major issue for VoiceOver users is that the language
picker wheels do not indicate which output languages support
speech. You should refer to the pasted description, or the
developer's web page for the list of translated languages with
spoken output options: Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek,
Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai.
In terms of output text usage, iPad users may find, in addition to
the app's support of languages that are not even supported on the
iPhone, that they get text output for languages whose keyboard
input is not currently supported on the iPad: Bulgarian,
Traditional Chinese, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Serbian, Thai,
Portuguese, Danish, Romanian, Norwegian, and Polish. You can copy
and paste the text into your favorite notes app (e.g. Simplenotes
for additional synched access through your computer, or even the
default Notes app). Also, according to the Multilingual Mac web
pages, apps like Pages on the iPad will correctly support these
languages when pasted in, even though the keyboard text input for
the iPad doesn't currently support these languages. A recent post
on the Multilingual Mac pages indicates that some of this language
support (e.g, for Hindi, which you can get both spoken and written
text output with this app), will still not be in the iOS 4 release.
Let me try to summarize the features of this app in the context of
what else is available in the app store. If you're looking to use a
dictionary, translation app, or voices in a standard supported
language, such as French, Spanish, German, or Italian, you have
access to many more apps and some really good voices. The Acapela
voices (sold as Infovox on the Mac) are available via in-app
purchase for apps such as Voxtrek (GPS navigation) and Speak It!
(general text to speech). If you're looking for voices, text, or
simple translation with a well-supported language, then you can
probably use other apps. Even for languages with non-Roman text
entry, like Russian, I can find translation apps that use the high
quality Loquendo voices that will do a better job (even though the
app is mostly inaccessible to VoiceOver and requires requires
fiddling to navigate to the one part of the app that is usable).
However, many other languages, particularly languages that do not
use Roman alphabets to input text, are not similarly supported in
the app store and are especially not well-supported through
VoiceOver. And these apps do not support speech recognition for
translation entry. What is unique about this app is its support
for both spoken and text translation output for a wide variety of
languages, including several which do not use Roman alphabet
characters for input and/or do not have full or even any support on
the iPhone/iPad. The developers, a Finnish company named
"Cellictica", are distributing versions for multiple platforms,
including the Android, hence the reason the languages are not
limited to the iPhone or iPad complement.
I am aware of Mark Taylor's coverage of Jibbigo's translation apps
in his Candleshore Blog (January 2010 entry, "Bring the Star Trek
Universal Translator to your iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch"; February
podcast episode 46, "A Real-Time Bi-Directional Spoken Language
Translator for your iPhone 3GS" demo of the Spanish-English
translation using VoiceOver). Jibbigo tailors its bi-directional
translation apps for specific language combinations (originally,
English-Spanish and Japanese-English; just recently released,
Chinese-English and Iraqi-English). The Jibbigo app is priced
between $25 and $30 per language pair and runs entirely on your
device. This has the advantage of allowing you to use the app
locally on your device, but also puts the processing load there,
while additionally running VoiceOver. Given the price, and current
operating system/processor limitations, I probably wouldn't try the
Jibbigo app out myself yet. It's a more interesting possibility
for the iPhone 4G release. Trippo VoiceMagix relies on a server
connection (just as with Dragon Dictation), and you're currently
limited to short spoken phrases (but longer text). However, the
transcription accuracy appears to be high, at least for U.S.
English voice input. Trippo's voices for translated text are OK,
but not spectacular. I don't recognize the source of these voices,
but they're different from what the iPhone uses (and would
certainly have to be for the languages the iPhone doesn't
support). I'd be curious to learn the accuracy of the Jibbigo bi-
directional translation for different spoken voice inputs and
accents (for Chinese, for example), but not enough to buy the app
<smile>. I note that they don't describe whether the output text
uses Simplified or Traditional Chinese characters (a selection
option of Trippo VoiceMagix), but that this also adds PinYin.
In conclusion, the Trippo VoiceMagix app will appeal to a specific
minority of VoiceOver users who are interested in language
translation, and who also (at present) have access to the U.S. App
Store. This is obviously a first generation release, with some
awkward features (such as having input text not remain in the
window when you return to the app, or having to fiddle the way you
dismiss the keyboard if you just want to paste in text to the
translation window and have it spoken). However, I think this is a
very promising app, and well worth the $6.99 (or even the $9.99 at
which I purchased it). Note that the default list price really is
$24.99, and the $6.99 that appeared yesterday is not likely to last
very long.
Finally, in order to give list viewers an alternative take on the
app, here's a link to the AppShouter review that appeared when
Trippo VoiceMagix was first released:
<http://www.appshouter.com/trippo-voicemagix-iphone-app-review/>
They give a separate description of the interface and the way in
which you can mail translated text. Their summary:
<begin quote>
All things aside, this app is a great value for all of the features
that it contains. Especially if you are really planning on using
more than one of the 27 languages in this app is definitely worth
it! If you’re still curious and reading this review I’d encourage
you to check out Trippo VliceMagix by Cellictia.
<end quote>
You can also check the Cellictica developer page for more
information about this app, and planned other app releases:
<http://www.cellictica.com/>
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
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