Text to Speech
Oct 27, 2023
I am trying out the text to speech option in Storyline but am finding that sometimes the playback is in English vs. the selected language. For example, I selected "Spanish (Latin American) as my language and "Lupe (Female)" as my voice but when I preview the slide it's "Lupe's" voice in English. This happened when I tried Japanese as well. It spoke Japanese on my first slide but then the second slide it spoke in English even though I had Japanese selected. Has anyone else experienced this? Why is this happening? How do I fix it? I am up-to-date on Articulate 360 updates.
Thanks,
Jackie Turbitt
8 Replies
Hi Jackie,
Thanks so much for reaching out!
Are you willing to share your file with our team so we can do some further testing? You can upload it here or share it privately in a support case. And not to worry, we'll delete it from our systems once troubleshooting is complete!
I shared the file privately in a support case (03942377). Thanks for your help!
Hi Jackie!
Thanks for following up and letting us know!
Great move sharing your file with our support engineers! I see that my teammate Robert has just picked up your case so you should be hearing from him shortly!
We can continue troubleshooting through your case to help keep all information in one spot.
Sounds good. Thanks for the update!
I just listened to the slides set to use a Japanese speaker. (The file was shared with me because I've worked with Jackie and her team).
For the first slide, the voice speaks the English text that is in the Text-to-Speech object. However, because the program is set for Japanese, the English words are mispronounced, in addition to being spoken with a Japanese accent. So the English text sounds foreign, but it's actually still in English. (The numbers are spoken in Japanese, because they were entered as numbers.)
Bottom line: Text-to-speech does not translate text. Changing the language in the drop-down merely tells the program what language to expect. The program then pronounces the text based on the pronunciations typically used in that language.
Hi Jackie!
You're welcome! Happy to help!
Have a nice weekend!
Aww, that's it -- text to speech does NOT translate text. Thank you, Judy!
You're welcome, Jackie.
BTW, I understand how that first slide confused you. It does not sound like English! I never would have imagined words being mispronounced the way those were.