Okay, let's talk about turning your ebooks into audiobooks! We're diving into the world of "text to speech" (TTS) or "speech synthesis". Basically, it's all about getting your computer to read aloud to you.
What Exactly is Text to Speech (or Speech synthesis)?
Text to speech is a computer system that takes written text – like a book, article, or document – and turns it into spoken words.
The software creates an artificial voice that reads the text to you.
Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis
How Does it Work?
The idea is simple, but making it work well is pretty complicated. The software breaks the text down into phonemes, which are the individual sounds that make up words.
To do this properly, the software needs to understand the spelling of the words but also the grammar.
For example, the software needs to tell the difference between a noun and a verb to pronounce them correctly.
Then, it figures out the right intonation, rhythm, and emphasis to make the speech sound natural. Finally, the software generates the audio so you can listen to the text.
The software can also be based on a AI system to do this and the research is still improving every mounth.
Where Do We See Text to Speech?
TTS is all around us! Think about the voice assistants on your smartphone like Google Assistant on Android and Siri on iPhones.
You ask them a question, and they respond using TTS. First, the service generates the text answer, and then your phone uses its text-to-speech function to speak the answer out loud. The same thing happens with smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home.
Text to speech is also a vital tool for people with visual impairments. Besides converting text to Braille, TTS is the only way for them to access information on screens, tablets, and e-readers. This often involves using a screen reader program.
Text to Speech on Ereaders: A Work in Progress
More and more e-readers are starting to include TTS features, especially Pocketbook e-readers.
But this isn't really a new thing, because the functionality existed many years ago in the older Samsung E6 or Bebook Neo e-readers.
These days, Pocketbook tend to be your best bets for getting TTS that works well in English, Spanish or French.
Using Calibre for Text to Speech
On your computer, you can use Calibre to read ebooks with text to speech.
Calibre is a fantastic, free software you can install on your computer. It's not just for organizing your ebooks; it can also read them aloud!
This feature has been around since version 6 and it's pretty good – at least comparable to similar TTS technologies. The feature was improved in version 8 as you can see in this video:
You can download it for free from https://calibre-ebook.com/fr/download.
Other Free Text-to-Speech Software
Here are a few more free TTS programs you can use on your computer:
- Flite: http://www.festvox.org/flite/
- eSpeak NG: https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/
- GNUSpeech: https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuspeech/
There are also online services like https://ttsreader.com/.
If you have Office365 from Microsoft, you also have a TTS function in the software Word.
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