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ESPEAK TEXT TO SPEECH

(email)   jonsd at users dot sourceforge.net
Download         eSpeak Sourceforge page         Forum         Mailing list
Usage

Languages

Documents

Samples

License

eSpeak is a compact open source software speech synthesizer for English and
other languages, for Linux and Windows.   http://espeak.sourceforge.net

eSpeak uses a "formant synthesis" method. This allows many languages to be
provided in a small size. The speech is clear, and can be used at high speeds,
but is not as natural or smooth as larger synthesizers which are based on human
speech recordings.

eSpeak is available as:

 * A command line program (Linux and Windows) to speak text from a file or from
   stdin.
 * A shared library version for use by other programs. (On Windows this is a
   DLL).
 * A SAPI5 version for Windows, so it can be used with screen-readers and other
   programs that support the Windows SAPI5 interface.
 * eSpeak has been ported to other platforms, including Android, Mac OSX and
   Solaris.

Features.
 * Includes different Voices, whose characteristics can be altered.
 * Can produce speech output as a WAV file.
 * SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) is supported (not complete), and also
   HTML.
 * Compact size. The program and its data, including many languages, totals
   about 2 Mbytes.
 * Can be used as a front-end to MBROLA diphone voices, see mbrola.html. eSpeak
   converts text to phonemes with pitch and length information.
 * Can translate text into phoneme codes, so it could be adapted as a front end
   for another speech synthesis engine.
 * Potential for other languages. Several are included in varying stages of
   progress. Help from native speakers for these or other languages is welcome.
 * Development tools are available for producing and tuning phoneme data.
 * Written in C.

I regularly use eSpeak to listen to blogs and news sites. I prefer the sound
through a domestic stereo system rather than small computer speakers, which can
sound rather harsh.

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Languages. The eSpeak speech synthesizer supports several languages, however in
many cases these are initial drafts and need more work to improve them.
Assistance from native speakers is welcome for these, or other new languages.
Please contact me if you want to help.

eSpeak does text to speech synthesis for the following languages, some better
than others.

Afrikaans, Albanian, Aragonese, Armenian, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Catalan,
Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish,
French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish,
Italian, Kannada, Kurdish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Macedonian, Malaysian,
Malayalam, Mandarin, Nepalese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian,
Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese,
Welsh.

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The latest development version is at: espeak.sf.net/test/latest.html.

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espeakedit is a GUI program used to prepare and compile phoneme data. It is now
available for download. Documentation is currently sparse, but if you want to
use it to add or improve language support, let me know.

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History. Originally known as speak and originally written for Acorn/RISC_OS
computers starting in 1995. This version is an enhancement and re-write,
including a relaxation of the original memory and processing power constraints,
and with support for additional languages.