Reading can be such fun with 'ReadPlease'
BANDUNG (JP): We all have, mainly unconsciously, a deep knowledge of the reading rules of our mother tongue. They were transmitted to us, in simplified form, during elementary school, and we improved on them year after year. Consider how difficult it is for those of us past childhood to learn a new language.
The human brain is designed to cope with these daunting tasks, but trying to describe and analyze how such a process works is roughly similar to attempting to write down instructions for riding a bike.
The reason for the difficulty is the complexity of the problem that needs to be solved. Thus, the ambition of many computer experts, linguists and audio engineers to give computers the capability to carry out a task that seems as natural as riding a bike is possible but almost impossible to describe.
A computer speech or text-to-speech synthesizer (TTS) is a computer-based system program that should be able to read any text aloud, whether it was directly introduced in the computer by an operator or scanned text converted into Optical Character Recognition.
Creating products like this involves integrating large quantities of specific information, sophisticated linguistic analysis and complex sound processing. The real goal will come not from this high-end, specialized product, but from bringing natural language speech to general users.
If the ability to analyze natural language can be integrated in a user-friendly way, the result would revolutionize the way computers communicate with people.
ReadPlease
I enjoy reading, but I miss having someone read to me. Especially with the arrival of the Internet where you have to read everything, more stuff to read is a burden. ReadPlease 2000 helps take off some of that burden. If you are finding there is too much on-screen reading with all of this technology, then you will love using ReadPlease 2000.
ReadPlease 2000 is an exciting new text-to-speech application. When you start the program, it looks something like one of those "talking book" gadgets everyone bought with an area like a small display screen, and a few controls at the right side.
The main controls are all very simple and straightforward to understand. The screen is the most important; that's where the text goes that you want to read. The scroll bar button on the face of the gadget will let you scroll through the voices. Naturally there is also a volume control as well as Play/Pause/Resume buttons.
A digital clock on the face of the gadget displays date and time; double click it to have them read to you.
You can add text by either typing directly on the screen or pasting it from other Windows programs or Windows Clipboard. It will highlight each word in the text while reading; you won't miss any text.
The program will let you adjust screen brightness and change the size of font. If the font is small, the words may be hard to see. It would be better to set a larger size and relax.
ReadPlease is a fully elastic program, you may size it as large as or as small as you like. Beware, you should not size it to a very small size as the screen will become distorted.
There are some option settings to make ReadPlease become more personal for you. ReadPlease uses your PC sound card to read text in your choice of four different types of voices, which have been named as Marry, Mike, Sam, and Marilyn.
I am surprised with a voice that sounds very close to human. It shatters the myth that computers should sound robotic. User can change the speed and pitch of each voice, to make each quite a bit different.
The voice does break up a bit if you increase the speed, but pronunciation and phrasing is pretty good, evidence of the advancement in this software.
I think ReadPlease has some artificial intelligence built-in, because it can recognize a lot of abbreviations, number combinations including date format, dollar amounts, and even speak "www" as "world wide web". You can challenge it by typing in any English word that you might think very difficult to pronounce.
Exotic hardware is not needed, just a standard personal computer. The minimum system requirements are, at least, Pentium 133, 16 MB RAM, Sound card, Windows(r) 95/98 or NT. It's freeware, you can download at http://readplease.com.
Potential Applications
ReadPlease 2000 can help children learning to type and spell words. It can be an educational program for testing and improving their spelling skills and having fun at the same time. If you have small children, ask them to type out a sentence or two into ReadPlease, then have them listen to what they have typed by pressing the Play button. You may be surprised by how many errors they can correct by listening to their sentences.
I think solutions like this will help children become more productive to learn the English language.
Blind people also widely benefit from TTS, which gives them access to written information from newspaper and magazines. I think the market for speech synthesis for blind users of personal computers will soon be invaded by mass-market synthesizers bundled with sound cards.
Another excellent use is to let it read you a speech, especially if it is a speech you have to give. You can write it up, then let ReadPlease read it back to you, so you can catch all those little bumps that need to be polished. Be careful, though, if you plan to enter text which might be considered obscene, check that other listeners are old enough to hear the resulting output.
ReadPlease 2000 is one of those great blends of programming: a useful tool, which can be used just for fun. Go for it now, and have it reread this article to you.