Tutorial 9: Android Voices

People all over the world speak English, but sometimes you find it more comfortable to speak your motherlanguage. In this tutorial some problems with voices are explained.

1. Why is there no voice for my language?

Please go to the trouble shooting page "Let LetMeTalk talk, Voice troubleshooting for Android"

2. Troubleshooting

If you have Problems with getting LetMeTalk to talk, please look at the Troubleshooting page "Let LetMeTalk talk, Voice troubleshooting for Android"

3. When changing the language the app asks me to download a voice file. Why?

if you do not download the voice file, the default speech engine switches to a server based approach, which works over the internet. In this case you have a small delay (the voice files have to be downloaded from the internet), data traffic (might cost money), the voice is lower quality and voice works only when connected to the internet.

So yes, you want to download the voice files, if they are not yet downloaded for the languages you want to use.

4. Why has the voice in my language a bad quality?

The default Google TextToSpeech engine has a bug which let it claim to support certain languages, while the quality is just plain awful. As an app can not differ between "good" or "bad" speech support there sadly is nothing we can do about it.

Sometimes the voice files are not installed on your device. In this case the Speech engine is using a server based approach with lower quality. In this case make sure the voice files are downloaded.

You might want to disable voice support or buy a commercial Text2Speech engine like SVOX if it supports your language.

5. How do I change the speech engine?

Go to "Settings" -> "Language & Input" -> "Text-to-speech output" -> "Preferered Engine".

Here should all installed speech engines be listet. Chose the wanted speech engine here. This speech engine is the one used by LetMeTalk!

6. Why would I want to use a different speech engine?

The default Google Speech Engine only supports a limited number of languages (English, Spanish, Italian, German, French) in a decent quality. Other speech engines can support more languages. For example, some newer Samsung devices ship with a speech engine which supports Russian, Chinese and Portuguese out of the box.

Another reason might be the sound quality. While the google speech engine is probably "good enough" for most users, commercial voices like SVOX might sound more natural. Please note that some speech engines are server based (read: they permanently download the voice files from the internet) and such they might cause data traffic.

7. Which languages has voice support

When chosing a speech engine you have to make sure, that the language you need is supported.

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