Yardbird
Yes, I am indeed still on the list!
I installed the Afrikaans Speech Synthesizer yesterday after having been
in
contact with Christo and another member - Riana (whose brother, Willem,
also
is involved with the project.
The sound quality is quite good.
Although I shall continue to use English most of the time, I shall
definitely make use of the Afrikaans synthesizer regularly.
Take care.
Regards.
Renette
Renette
-----Original Message-----
From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Yardbird
Sent: 08 July 2007 01:56
To: JFW List
Subject: More info on that Afrikaans synth for Jaws
To add more helpful info than I was able to originally, here's the
straight
dope from the program's developer, Cristo de Klerk. Does anyone know if
Renette is still on the list? This might be something of interest to her,
as
well.
Cristo de Klerk writes:
Actually this is a multilingual synthesiser and Afrikaans is one of a
number
of languages it offers. Its English is the furthest advanced, followed by
Afrikaans, but other languages like Polish, German and French also seem to
be going nicely.
It is a free, open source synthesiser Developed by Jonathan Duddington
from
the UK. Originally he developed it for the Linux environment but then also
created a port as a Windows Sapi speech synthesiser.
A friend of mine, Willem van der Walt, started developing the Afrikaans
speech rules for it and then I joined him. I usually do a lot of work on
the
Afrikaans during weekends and then send out the latest Afrikaans
dictionary
to a number of people on a Sunday.
You have no idea how wonderful it is to at last be able to listen to books
in Afrikaans. Up to now we had to make do with either a Dutch synthesiser
trying to produce intellegible Afrikaans, or an English one making a total
mess of it. But homo sapiens gets used to anything, I suppose.
This synthesiser is called eSpeak. It doesn't sound nearly as natural as
most other Sapi synthesisers, but it is very,very small, very clear and
understandable. The whole package is only about 800 KB. It works well with
Window-Eyes and some people are using it with JFW, although some have
trouble getting it installed properly. It also works with the free screen
readers.
Anyone interested in it can either get it from me or you can always find
the
latest version of eSpeak at:
http://espeak.sourceforge.net/test/latest.html
Just be sure to download the correct version for Windows, because there is
also a Linux version as well as programs to edit and compile the language
dictionaries.
Regards
Christo
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