TTS voices project

[Krister Ekstrom]

Hi,
I'd be glad to help in any way possible with the Swedish voice, but as i
understood it from a friend who already is trying to help out it's a
nightmare to put together a voice. How do you suggest one started if i
no nothing about the ins and outs of Espeak?
/Krister

Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote:
> Hello All!
> 
> I'd like to propose a new Ubuntu Accessibility project aimed at creating 
> Text To Speech voices (or helping to improve existing ones).
> 
> Project wiki page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Projects/Voices
> 
> The project is especially focused on creating and improving eSpeak 
> voices, which we need for the multilingual Live CDs and which are 
> relatively easy to create. The eSpeak maintainer says that he is happy 
> to create new basic language sets, but needs help from native speakers 
> to improve them and actually make them usable. Most of this work does 
> not involve programming or audio mixing, but merely altering language 
> definition files.
> 
> So if you speak one of the languages listed in the wiki, please test the 
> quality of the voice and give some feedback on what might be improved. 
> As we go we can help each other figure out the workings of the eSpeak 
> language definition files.
> 
> This project is important for several reasons:
> 
> - First of all we should strive to provide local language support in 
> spoken form to as many people as possible. Universal Access is both 
> about infrastructure and tools as well as language.
> 
> - The live CD currently ships with some of worlds most spoken languages 
> by default in the form of localised desktop and application interfaces. 
> It would be great if we had the corresponding voices available as well.
> 
> - This represents a fairly simple non-coding way of contributing to 
> Ubuntu Accessibility So if you can spare some time but don't do 
> programming this is a great way to contribute!
> 
> - Local promotion -- It would be much easier to promote Ubuntu and Free 
> Software to local visual impairment communities if we had native speech 
> support. In places where commercial offerings are poor it's a killer 
> feature!
> 
> If we can make a basic start on this within the ubuntu accessibility 
> team I'd like to invite other groups to help out such as the Ubuntu 
> Studio team or the good folks over at LibriVox.org
> 
> 
> Henrik
>