speaks for itself!
September 29th, 2005 by heatherthis is so cool! can i get one of these in a portable version?
Voice of Japan is a Japanese text to speech machine. Voice of Japan generates voice from written texts. Lean back and listen to your Japanese text being read by a gentle female voice. Paste any Japanese text from websites, email or documents to the textbox and have it read with a superb near natural voice quality (voice demo here).
Japanese Text to Speech (TTS) Machine: Japanese Voice Generation.
it would be great if you could have it as a PDA, and then just type in some english, and have it speak for you… of course it doesn’t work the other way… all the developer needs is some voice-recognition, and auto-translate over into english!
sadly, it only works on windoze. 
hmm… right after i drafted this post, it occured to me… i suppose this isn’t really earth shattering, i mean, my mac can speak to me all day. but mine doesn’t speak japanese. (i’m wondering do japanese macs speak japanese? if so why can’t mine?)
edit: no, macs don’t speak japanese. what a shame! seems like a real oversight on the part of apple.
September 29th, 2005 at 1:59 pm
Macs only have built-in English and German text speaking, even the ones sold here in Japan. It’s really just an accessibility tool, since computer-based text-to-speech always sounds a bit unnatural. Far better to find a native speaker to read to you.
Although, come to think of it, it would be nice to highlight any word in Japanese and hear it pronounced. Maybe someone could write an app for OS X that did that.
September 29th, 2005 at 2:07 pm
LOL, as i was editing my post you added this comment.
yeah, as an accessibility tool it’s very handy. my friends son (who is blind) just got his school to buy him a mac to use and he uses it all day in class. what a huge improvement for his education.
September 29th, 2005 at 4:37 pm
Wow. I’m impressed by all the material you have amassed and by your willingness to learn Japanese! It really is a difficult language. I imagine once you are in Japan, it will start to make more sense. I find that the cooking shows on cable are easiest to understand — the women speak slowly. If you get NHK or any of the Japanese networks where you live, you might try watching them.
September 30th, 2005 at 10:52 am
no japanese tv here in ireland. but i can get a good number of DVDs in shop. i’m not sure just *why* they are all so incredibly violent though.
i saw on your site, you recommend cooking shows! how cool!
http://mariemockett.blogspot.com/
i’m apprehensive/excited/scared/happy about going to japan. i don’t know how much language skill i can amass before i get there, but i’ll keep pluggin away.
October 16th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
I have to say, Voice of Japan has AMAZING quality of the synthesized voice. The only other Japanese TTS I’m aware of is the free SAP 14 voices from Microsoft. Too bad there only appears to be a woman’s voice. I’d like to hear a male’s voice too.
October 17th, 2005 at 11:31 am
“synthesized voice”??
synthesized?
no way! how is that possible?