Dictionaries for AT&T NV English Voices

[PHenry1026]

TextAloud (TA) dictionaries (utilizing only regular expressions) and AT&T Natural Voice (NV) dictionaries transform AT&T NV UK and US English voices into ready-to-use professional text-to-speech presentations.

There is extensive corrections for homographs (read, live, etc.); most dates, time, places, telephone numbers, interjections and standard footnotes are pronounced correctly. There is extensive coverage of all major currencies. These dictionaries also provide fixes for all known AT&T NV bugs.


For more information visit: http://ReadTAClearly.com


Percy

[jack Schmidling]

I don't understand the posting but I popped in here to re-open a similar discussion. I am getting tired of Mike's mispronunciation of very common words and I would like discuss it again to fix it or find another voice.

Many words I have been able to fix using the dictionary but misery still seems to elude him. In spite of fixing it in the dictionary, it still invariably comes out as "Missouri". When setting it up and testing in the dictionary, he says it correctly but never in actual speak.

The original posting here mentioned problems with live, read and there are quite a few like that but I assumed these are unfixable problems.

I don't understand how it can determine the correct pronunciation without make decisions based on context.

I am also having trouble with words that can not be respelled into English words.

For example: foie gras. If I tell the dictionary to use fwa gra, it simply spells it out which is worse than mis-pronouncing it.

Finally, I thought there was a place where other voices could be tested without purchase but all I seem to find now are short canned samples.

Thanks,

Jack

[PHenry1026]

Greetings Jack,

The purpose of this post is to announce the availability of a set of dictionaries that makes AT&T NV UK & US English voices almost perfect. In the dictionaries being offered for sale, there is extensive coverage and corrections for all the problems you raised.

You can get foie gras to pronounce correctly by entering the following phoneme {f w aa 1 g r aa 1} for it (without the braces) in your AT&T NV dictionary.

Percy
http://ReadTAClearly.com

[jack Schmidling]

That fixed my foie gras problem... thanks but now I am working on Champs-Élysées but it will not allow ev as the phoneme for long a. Sounds like ate is as close as I can get and that is ev.

Beyond that, I downloaded the unabridged dictionary but can not get through the tts.cfg part of the readme file. Step 10 says to locate "Language Dictionary" but that does not appear in my cfg as below.....

Language en_us
LanguageLocale en_us
LanguageTextAnalysis en_us\fe_en_us.dll

Voice mike_16k
VoiceName Mike16
VoiceData en_us\Mike\Mike.dat
VoiceAudio en_us\Mike\dbpcmbec archive
VoiceLanguage en_us
VoiceDefault false
..............

Also, I am confused on "paste the following" followed by "sample below"... what actually am I to paste.

Please bear with me as I am about a mile over my head on this.

js

[PHenry1026]

Hi Jack,

The phoneme for Champs Elysees is {sh aa n 0 z ey l iy z ey 1}. However, entering this phoneme in AT&T NV Dictionaries for Champs-Élysées would not work because AT&T NV dictionaries can't handle the dash or dashes between words and would not recognize É or é. I believe there is a phoneme pronunciation for Champs-Élysées in the RC Dictionary.

There should be a line "LanguageDictionary en_us\en_us.dict att_darpabet_english" in your tts.cfg file.

If you are totally swamped you can email your tts.cfg file and I will configure it for you. Email me at phenry@readtaclearly.com. Also any questions regarding setting up the Read Clearly dictionaries please contact me at the above email.

Percy
http://ReadTAClearly.com

[McFortner]

I just got the Read Clearly Unabridged Dictionaries and followed the instructions with it. My only problem is that now my AT&T voices speak numbers differently, especially 4 and any number with 4 in it, instead of "f-or-r" it's "f-ah-r" in what sounds like a cliched Boston accent. It's driving me and my Southern US ears nuts, but I can't figure out how to change it back without undoing all the AT&T dictionaries. HELP!

[PHenry1026]

Greetings

Read Clearly Dictionaries has no special handling for how numbers are pronounced. Please provide (post) a sample sentence or paragraph with the problem you are encountering.

Also please use Read Clearly's Phoneme Forum to post and discuss issues relating to Read Clearly.

Percy

[McFortner]

Greetings

Read Clearly Dictionaries has no special handling for how numbers are pronounced. Please provide (post) a sample sentence or paragraph with the problem you are encountering.

Ah, I found the problem. In the tts.cfg file I accidentally deleted the "LanguageTextAnalysis en_us\fe_en_us.dll" line. I found that when comparing the old file to the new one. Apparently the problem was all because of a short between the left and the right headphones.

Thanks,
Michael