eSpeak
Compact, open-source, software speech synthesizer / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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eSpeak is a free and open-source, cross-platform, compact, software speech synthesizer. It uses a formant synthesis method, providing many languages in a relatively small file size. eSpeakNG (Next Generation) is a continuation of the original developer's project with more feedback from native speakers.
Original author(s) | Jonathan Duddington |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Alexander Epaneshnikov et al. |
Initial release | February 2006; 18 years ago (2006-02) |
Stable release | |
Repository | github |
Written in | C |
Operating system | Linux Windows macOS FreeBSD |
Type | Speech synthesizer |
License | GPLv3 |
Website | github |
Because of its small size and many languages, eSpeakNG is included in NVDA[2] open source screen reader for Windows, as well as Android,[3] Ubuntu[4] and other Linux distributions. Its predecessor eSpeak was recommended by Microsoft in 2016[5] and was used by Google Translate for 27 languages in 2010;[6] 17 of these were subsequently replaced by proprietary voices.[7]
The quality of the language voices varies greatly. In eSpeakNG's predecessor eSpeak, the initial versions of some languages were based on information found on Wikipedia.[8] Some languages have had more work or feedback from native speakers than others. Most of the people who have helped to improve the various languages are blind users of text-to-speech.