Google Free Text to Speech Translator

[LJCC]

https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/#demo

In case anyone wants the added help out there, the free text-to-speech Google site is so good.

It's literally like listening to a real-life conversation.

And the caveat is, it automatically reads foreign languages like a native in the multi-speaker feature.

For example: an excerpt from the current story I'm writing that's passed through the Studio, Multi-speaker output.

• "Lascia che ti chieda: Riccardo ti ha mai parlato del suo primo ictus?" (Let me ask you: did Riccardo ever mention his first stroke?) Aunt Sofia nodded sadly as she finished off her cigarette and lit another one. "Esattamente. Gli uomini tengono nascosti i loro problemi finché non è troppo tardi. E cosa è successo? Tuo marito è morto mentre faceva la cacca in bagno, leggendo il giornale. Quel secondo colpo avrebbe potuto essere evitato." (Exactly. Men keep their problems locked up until it’s too late. And what happened? Your husband died while taking a shit in the toilet, reading his paper. That second stroke could’ve been avoided.) Then the old woman puffing her curls suddenly noticed the well-dressed giant in front of them. She looked up and said, "E guarda questo ragazzo. Fissa il muro da anni. E' ritardato?" (And look at this guy. He’s been staring at the wall for ages. Is he retarded?)

The Text-to-Speech translation will speak in Italian and then speak the English parts seamlessly. It's, amazing tbh, because now I get to hear the foreign language in my head while also getting the translated text.

CONS:

• Limited to 500 words because it's a free version. Longer than 500 words, the page seems to lag heavily.
• Long paragraphs needed to be cut in the multispeaker option. Other voices don't seem to have this problem of lagging. Maybe because two speakers are doing the talking,

PROS:

• The multi-speaker output (a man and woman speaking alternately) has the best translation quality, sounding like the most real conversation I've ever listened to.
• I consider passing my work on this site, the final phase of my editing process, by catching on nuanced errors like doubled-up words (example: He he went to school,) and other grammar errors like intrusive sentence structures that don't sound right. I remember spending an entire day just trying to get an entire long-ass paragraph right because there was something wrong with the phrasing of my writing. The paragraph also didn't sound right.
• It's free. Limited, yes. But free.

 

Edited October 31, 2024 by LJCC

[Mike Carss]

I considered using this for the final phase of my editing process, however as you say, it's limited to 500 word chunks. I also found it didn't run very well on my ancient laptop that I only use for writing. You mentioned lag. I experienced that too, and in some cases I had to refresh the page in order to get it working again.

Another free alternative I found was https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/

It offers decent sounding free voices, although to access them you need to use Edge. The best voice options aren't available for Firefox and Chrome. It's really strange.

The other reason I decided to go with this service was that each word lights up as it's being spoken, allowing you to easily follow along. I fed it up to 5k words at once, and it processes and starts speaking quickly enough.

[LJCC]

5 hours ago, mcarss said:

I considered using this for the final phase of my editing process, however as you say, it's limited to 500 word chunks. I also found it didn't run very well on my ancient laptop that I only use for writing. You mentioned lag. I experienced that too, and in some cases I had to refresh the page in order to get it working again.

Another free alternative I found was https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/

It offers decent sounding free voices, although to access them you need to use Edge. The best voice options aren't available for Firefox and Chrome. It's really strange.

The other reason I decided to go with this service was that each word lights up as it's being spoken, allowing you to easily follow along. I fed it up to 5k words at once, and it processes and starts speaking quickly enough.

The reason why I liked Google better...

The reader AI will adjust to your writing's emotions. You can literally hear the AI giggling or laughing if you depicted the sentence as funny, or hear them being somber if the dialogue is sad, or they'll whisper if you said, he whispered. Plus, the AI isn't robotic sounding.

At first, I was creeped out at how realistic they sounded because they sounded like real people conversing. They'll hasten their pace in talking if the writing depicts it as urgent or slow down if it's a very sad scene. And the narration when the AI reads dialogue is just chef's kiss. It's very uncanny valley.

However, it only works on their multispeaker version, where a man and woman will interchange when narrating the dialogue. I wish they had this level of AI in their other voices because I wanted my story explicitly read by a man.

But yeah, if you want the typical AI-sounding text-to-speech voice and copy and paste a boatload of text like an entire chapter, this isn't it. That's one for the paid version, I think.

[Mike Carss]

9 hours ago, LJCC said:

The reader AI will adjust to your writing's emotions. You can literally hear the AI giggling or laughing if you depicted the sentence as funny, or hear them being somber if the dialogue is sad, or they'll whisper if you said, he whispered. Plus, the AI isn't robotic sounding.

Give it time. Soon, all AI voice synthesis will be that level of quality, either for free or at a very affordable price.

Either way, it's an amazing tool to add to our arsenal.

[Talo Segura]

Concerning translation, it's difficult to know how right it gets it unless you are fluent in both languages, in which case you hardly need an auto translate. The big issue is slang, coloquialisms, and that also changes with generations, today's kids don't use the words of their parents! But still we can't expect the world for free...

[LJCC]

On 11/5/2024 at 5:55 PM, Talo Segura said:

Concerning translation, it's difficult to know how right it gets it unless you are fluent in both languages, in which case you hardly need an auto translate. The big issue is slang, coloquialisms, and that also changes with generations, today's kids don't use the words of their parents! But still we can't expect the world for free...

I'm not expecting a 100% translation of the language since it's AI-based. But getting to hear the foreign language being said as though you're forming the words in your character's voice helps a lot. 

[ChromedOutCortex]

Also check out ElevenLabs (elevenlabs.io)- great voices and all very natural. 

They offer a free tier, which gives you 10 minutes per month for free, their lower tier plans are not bad. They've also got a cool voice cloning feature, which I've tried and it works amazingly well. I cloned my son and daughters voice (with their permission, of course) and it was amazing - it sounded exactly like them.

[LJCC]

42 minutes ago, ChromedOutCortex said:

Also check out ElevenLabs (elevenlabs.io)- great voices and all very natural. 

They offer a free tier, which gives you 10 minutes per month for free, their lower tier plans are not bad. They've also got a cool voice cloning feature, which I've tried and it works amazingly well. I cloned my son and daughters voice (with their permission, of course) and it was amazing - it sounded exactly like them.

This is actually great. Except the 10k limitation. That feels like 10k words. And my story is currently at 240k words. Haha. But the quality of the voice is exceptional.