I agree bar the major con of name pronunciation. Even taking your own surname - Rabagliati; how many computers could pronounce that correctly? Also, implementing automatic audio conversion would presumably slow down Wikipedia considerably. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Rabagliati" andyr@wizzy.com To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 11:26 AM Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Text to speech (Was: Conference report from SouthAfrica)
On Tue, 26 Apr 2005, Timwi wrote:
I guess I shouldn't have said this, because now everyone thinks that arguing that accents can be mutually unintelligible, is an argument against natural recordings and for text-to-speech synthesis.
I am glad you brought it up, as I believe it needs to be addressed.
When Atlanta Airport (Georgia) opened, with automated trains taking you out to the terminals, there was a requirement for public announcements telling you which terminal, stand clear, departing now, etc.
They started out with a pleasant local (Georgian) accent.
Complaints - sounded too provincial, International passengers, etc.
They changed it to a female announcer.
Complaints - people didn't pay enough attention, what was wrong with the previous one, etc.
They have ended up with an assertive, metallic, computer voice.
No complaints.
Things pro text to speech :-
- Immediately works with all Wikipedia content.
- No problems with editing.
- Uniformity, even if it is uniformly poor ..
I will leave the pro natural speech argument to others - after preparing my flame-proof underwear :-) I would also welcome input from people for whom English is not a first language.
Cheers, Andy! _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l