What is text to speech
What is text to speech? how it is work
Before we
understand Text to speech, let me make one thing clear. Text to speech and
Speech to Text go hand in hand.
For better
understanding purposes, we will be looking more towards Speech to text and will
then summarise it with Text to speech.
Do you
remember the days of copywriting? Or one of the best things I remember for Text
to speech is Mahabharata.
I don’t want to get into the deep history of Hindu culture, but just to refresh a point on what text to speech is, Lord Veda Vyasa knew Mahabharata (or was the only one who knew about Mahabharata) but the only problem he had at that time was, he can only speak it. No one was able to write what he said at the same speed.
It was like he once started, would only stop after speaking a lot of time. And as no one was able to cope up with his speed other than Lord Ganesha.
So it's
simply Lord Veda Vyas was the speaker while Lord Ganesha was converting the
speech of Veda Vyasa into words.
This case
can be considered as the first Text to speech
conversion. Although it was done manually and though, it is still the
first Text to speech conversion.
So what now? Why do we need Text to speech conversion?
As you see
around, the world is not “Satyug” - The era of Truth or the era of help and
kindness. Everyone needs something that can make their task easy and complete
it fast.
Text to
speech is one of the other things that is making humanity lazier and more
powerful at the same time.
The things
that we used to type my hands can now be spoken, There is much Text to speech software that can make us convert our
speech into text and one of the most common and famous Text to speech converters online is from google.
Also known as Google text to speech.
Google has
advanced in many fields including text to speech. Well, it has not only
advanced but excelled in this field. Nowadays, you can not only type simple
messages with it, but you can type a whole blog by speaking and even you can
write your Book. Just like Mahabharata.
Is Text to Speech Reliable?
Well coming onto its reliability, I do think it's more than reliable than making someone write for you. Text to speech is free, you can convert any speech including songs to text.
For better
understanding, take the common example that you see in everyday life. “YOUTUBE
SUBTITLE” - Youtube subtitles which were earlier mostly written by the users,
can now be auto-generated on the basis of what they are saying in the video.
How?
It is text
to speech that makes it all possible.
Understanding Text to speech and Speech to Text
Remember
the first line of our post? About summarising text to speech and Speech to Text?
So let us do that.
First thing first: Text to speech means whatever is written, it can be heard in the voice. This feature helps everyone who doesn’t want to waste their time reading.
Today many websites are using this feature of text to speech, which makes the content easier to understand, and simultaneously the user can do their extra or other tasks.
Speech To
Text: Remember our example of Mahabharata? It is Speech to text, where the user
says something and it is converted into texts. Just like youtube does or Your
google keyboard “Which has a feature of speak and write that allows you to
speak whereas it writes it down into the text.”
Both are
vice versa. It is like, if you can write from what I speak, then I can speak
from what you have written.
Uses of Text To Speech
Well as now
we have clearly understood Text to speech, let us see its uses.
- It can be
used by people who are blind. With the help of Text to speech, they can convert
the text into speech and can hear it.
- It can be
used by people who are illiterate, With the help of google text to speech and
google translator at the same time, any language can be converted into the
desired language and then can be heard by the user.
-
Beneficial for travelers. Imagine you're in Russia but you don’t know how to
speak Russian and don’t even understand Russian. How are you going to survive
there? With the help of Text to speech, you can convert your known language
text into any other language and then use the text to speech module to convey
your voice. Whereas at the same time, you can use the Speech to Text module t
understand the same thing.
- Can be
used to convert a song from lyrics.
Can Text to speech Be dangerous?
Well, in
many cases it can be dangerous, but not in a serious manner. It is making us
lazy in both the modules, text to speech as well as speech to text.
- People
are becoming lazy.
- Craving
for learning new languages is degrading in young people.
- Text to
speech isn’t emotional. Meaning if you want to convey your condolences, your
emotions would be conveying that message, but in Text to speech, it isn’t there
which can definitely make your message go in the wrong way.
Conclusion –
This high-tech or cutting-edge technology is good but still hasn’t evolved that much that
it can convey messages that a normal human can. It is just a dumb machine that
is doing what it is programmed for. Without emotions and feelings.
Once scientist discovers a way to convey emotions along with text to speech, it would become a lot easier for people to understand what others are saying or trying to convey.
As of now,
Neuraltts has one of the best Text to speech modules that can pretty much
understand any language.
Whereas, if you want to use any other service rather than Google, you can check out Text to speech online and Even yous can find Text to speak Hindi, which is considered to be the most confusing language after French.