Voice engine for Android Russian torrent. Screen reader for Android or smartphone for the blind

If your native language is not English and you do not write applications only for the iPhone, then you will have a rather difficult time if you want to find a suitable toolkit for developing the so-called. mobile “voice-enabled” applications.

This review provides a classification and describes the most worthy of the mobile TTS engines.

I am doing research in the field of designing mobile device interfaces for people with visual impairments. To implement one of my projects, I needed a voice generation engine with multi-language support (at least two languages ​​- English and Russian). This was the reason for searching for a speech synthesizer.

For convenience, we divide TTS engines into three classes:

• commercial;
• free (solutions licensed under GPL, LGPL and softer licenses such as BSD License or wxWindows License, which allow commercial development of products);
• built-in (tools provided by the operating system itself).

Commercial engines

SVOX Mobile TTS

Price: n/a
Languages: 26, including Russian
high
Mobile OS: Android, Symbian, Windows CE/Windows Mobile, BREW

The SVOX company has the most “tasty” product from a technical point of view - SVOX Mobile TTS. However, since the company operates mainly in the B2B segment, they never responded to my two emails requesting a price.

The price listed in the header applies to operating systems such as Windows Mobile and Symbian, but Acapela's business model varies depending on the chosen OS. For example, they most strongly promote the iOS direction, for which a separate website has been created. There you can register and get an evaluation version of their engine for free. The price of the bare SDK for the former iPhone OS is 250€. Also, considerable percentages are deducted from each application you sell in the App Store.

I note that Acapela provides “cloud” speech synthesis, as well as porting the SDK to any platform.

Free engines

Flite

Price: no
Languages: English plus the ability to compile FestVox languages
Subjective sound quality assessment: low
Mobile OS: Android, Windows CE/Windows Mobile, iOS, PalmOS
Possibility of developing commercial products: yes (CMU license)

In the desktop world, the Festival speech synthesizer is well known. It has a port called Flite for mobile devices and embedded systems, which is distributed under their own X11-like license, which allows the software to be freely distributed to anyone, as well as to build both commercial and free applications based on it. There are ports for Windows CE/Windows Mobile, PalmOS, Android and .

Instructions for compiling the engine for WM are included in the distribution, but on this platform eSpeak has one significant limitation - voice generation is only possible in a WAV file. The assembled TTS engine for Windows Mobile can be obtained.

ESpeak has been ported to Android. The easiest way to try it is to install the TTS Service Extended application from the Android Market, which allows you to switch between the built-in engine and eSpeak. This TTS engine is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Embedded Solutions

Built-in solutions are present only in Symbian and Android. For some unknown reason, Microsoft has deprived its mobile OS of the corresponding software interface (MS SAPI).

Symbian

Price: no
Languages: English
Subjective assessment of sound quality: extremely low
Possibility of developing commercial products: yes

The Symbian Foundation's built-in TTS is hidden in the CMdaAudioPlayerUtility class. Although it doesn't say anything about it, it does allow speech synthesis. Unfortunately, Russian language is not supported. The quality of English speech generation is very low. Without preparation it is quite difficult to understand what exactly he said.

Additional language packs can be downloaded, but the list of supported phones is very limited. Installing packages for the Russian language on a device running Symbain OS S60 5th did not give the expected results; the built-in TTS did not speak Russian.

I note that there is a fairly convenient API extension called NSS TTS Utility API, a description of which can be found

is a very convenient application that will give you the opportunity to listen to books that are saved in text format. We present to your attention a reader with support for speech synthesis, Moon+ Reader. The right choice for book lovers!

Video available:

Of the large number of readers that support speech synthesis, Moon+ Reader in Russian is the best voice reader for a tablet. Like any other reading program, it supports different formats, online libraries where you can download thousands of free books. This application has a huge number of functions - 10 different design themes, including night mode, different types of page turning, the program itself removes extra spaces and indents to make reading more comfortable. The reader will remind you of the harm to your eyes if you read for a long time, you can adjust the brightness and other parameters, and of course, dictionaries. By the way, this program supports Google Translate. The Moon+ Reader voice reader is perfect for tablets running the Android operating system.

Let's talk about the voice reading function - it's convenient and quite entertaining. You can change the voices of your device. Often such voice modules even have names - Katya, Sergey, Yura. But for this function to start working, you need to download certain files and configure the program. Read about it below.
First you need to download and install SVOX Classic TTS. Next, install a male or female voice package (instructions are in the description of the voice engine). Setting up SVOX Classic TTS. Next, in the settings of the reader itself, select SVOX Classic TTS as the default voice engine. Ready! Now you can use the voice reading feature and enjoy your favorite books!

SVOX Classic Text To Speech Engine is a voice engine for the platform that allows you to reproduce any text document as a speech stream. Every device running Android OS has a built-in program that allows you to convert text into human speech. However, the disadvantage of this program is that it only supports foreign languages. A special feature of SVOX Classic Text To Speech Engine is that this program can “speak” Russian.

Using SVOX Classic Text opens up a lot of new possibilities. Thanks to it, you can voice various programs, play e-books and important messages. SVOX Classic Text supports more than 25 languages. Thanks to this set, this program is unique in its kind. There is also the ability to select voice accompaniment - there are forty options in total. To reproduce text in Russian, you need to download a special add-on to the program, which is easy to find on the Internet. For further work, just install the program along with this add-on and that’s it - your smartphone speaks Russian!

SVOX Classic Text settings when playing text allow you to set the default use of this program. To do this, just go to the application settings and go to the “voice input - output” section. There you need to tick the “system installed by default” checkbox. After this, the user can also select the default voice.

On our website you can download Russian voice engines to your Android smartphone. The kit includes the program itself, already activated with a key and does not require registration, as well as 40 male and female voices in 25 languages, naturally including Russian. Now your smart phone truly becomes one, give it any text or command and it will read any text array for you, in the language you need.

The developers of the Svox Russian Katja Voice application decided to make the dreams of hundreds of thousands of people come true - to create a program that will read the required texts itself and out loud. And yes, of course, in a pleasant voice. The Svox Russian Katja Voice application runs on the Android platform and is available for all mobile devices (tablets, smartphones) without exception. This library of reading texts by voice is now available in Russian. It is noteworthy that despite the name of the program, there are two voices in it - male and female. Working with the service is very simple. When you start the program, you can read the following message on the screen: "Hello, I'm Katya. Enter text and I will read your text out loud." After directly entering the required information or downloading the required document, book, passage, as well as manipulating the settings, the application begins to “speak”. Or rather, read aloud what the user entered.

Program features:
- high quality reading texts;
- male and female voices “Katya” and “Yuri”;
- clear and correct diction, pleasant timbre of voice;
- the necessary parameters are configured manually or automatically;
- the ability to change the speed of information playback and volume, as well as raising and lowering the tone;
- the ability to integrate with GPS, as a result of which your phone turns into a full-fledged navigator, indicating the right path using voice commands;
- the ability to use the service with other applications (the program can read incoming messages aloud or notify about incoming calls and other notifications);
- the latest version of the program has the ability to correct pronunciation;
- simple and clear user-friendly interface;
- constant updates and support from developers.
With the Svox Russian Katja Voice application, the process of listening to your favorite books and important documents turns into pure pleasure.