[DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)

Blake Roberts beroberts at hughes.net
Wed Feb 1 21:47:19 EST 2012


So it's possible to, for example, make an English Dectalk have a Spanish
accent without having to actually change languages? How is that done? I knew
that English Dectalk can sing in other languages, but I did not know it is
also possible to add the relevant accent.
Blake

  _____  

From: dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com
[mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Jake McMahan
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 9:32 PM
To: DECtalk Discussions
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)


He didn't get a dectalk with a german or russian accent, he modified the
phonemes to fit the particular accent.  


From: Blake Roberts <mailto:beroberts at hughes.net>  
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 9:19 PM
To: 'DECtalk Discussions' <mailto:dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>  
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)

I've wondered that myself at times. I guess we'll never know how he got a
Dectalk 4.3/4.4 with a German accent. It is my understanding that the first
Dectalk version with foreign languages (in addition to American English) was
4.6 something.
Blake

  _____  

From: dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com
[mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Raymond Grote
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 9:01 PM
To: DECtalk Discussions
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)


Yes, that definitely brings back memories!
I just wish his site didn't go down. I wonder where he got that version of
Dectalk.
 
----- Original Message ----- 

From: Blake  <mailto:beroberts at hughes.net> Roberts 
To: 'DECtalk Discussions' <mailto:dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>  
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 6:50 PM
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)


I read somewhere that when Patrick made his Revenge of Borris skit, he used
a German Dectalk and made it sound Russian. That production still amazes me
after over 10 years. For fun, I'm attaching Patrick's production so  that
list members can hear it again. Enjoy!
Blake

  _____  

From: dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com
[mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Raymond Grote
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 6:35 PM
To: DECtalk Discussions
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)


Wow, interesting thing there. I know Patrick Perdue made Dectalk sound
Russian once. It sounded exactly like 4.3, with a Russian accent. I say 4.3
because when it sang, there was vibrato, which 4.4 can't do because of some
bug I heard. I wonder if he used the Russian language and then used phonemes
to make it sound English, or if he used English and somehow made it sound
Russian. I'd bet the former, but either way would be hard. I doubt he used a
Speak window either, since those older versions of the Speak window had only
english support.
 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: ebruckert  <mailto:edbruckert at gmail.com> Bruckert 
To: DECtalk Discussions <mailto:dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>  
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 10:34 AM
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?

     just to be clear there are no legal versions of DECtalk in the public
domain, if there were I wouldn't have gone without a tool for years, and is
of course I have versions of DECtalk but they weren't able to work with my
screen reader.  
If there weren't public domain version I would be working to partner up with
somebody and create some tools which is basically what I did with enable
cuss I needed a SAPI.
   Okay as far as versions of DECtalk that were made, there is American
English, British English, French, German, Chinese, and Korean. The quality
varies is there a lot of problems in doing this besides just creating the
phonemes.
    In addition I did a special version of DECtalk that is used by kinnor
software which can chant the Torah and other things to prepare one for bar
mitzvah. It lacks letter to sound rules because both Hebrew and Arabic
letter to sound rules are extremely difficult because in a lot of texts they
don't write the vowels, which people can figure out but computers are hardly
data
.  As an example right in English sentence remove all the vowels and see if
her friend can figure it out,


On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Raymond Grote <musicalman1 at comcast.net>
wrote:


Well, the sonic thing wasn't a real big thing at least for me, nor anyone
else I knew that used it. It sounded strange, and I never did like dectalk
above rates of400 or so.
Going off topic here, I wonder if a decent British dectalk was ever made? 


----- Original Message ----- From: "Pitermach" <pitermach at gmail.com>
To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>

Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 8:47 AM 

Subject: Re: [DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?




Actually yeah. The driver was written by Tyler and I sort of helped him out
with it. The first version only did Paul and had sonic to speed the rate up
even more. I asked him to add voices, and that's the newer version where
sonic had to be removed because it was crashing things apparently.

On 2012-02-01 13 <tel:2012-02-01%2013> :52, Raymond Grote wrote:


Hi,
I was under the impression that both Dectalks were the same engine, just
different versions of the driver, and the newer one supported voices but the
older one didn't?

----- Original Message ----- From: "Pitermach" <pitermach at gmail.com>
To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 5:43 AM
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?




About the issue with the second dectalk, what happens is almost every
parameter is actually changed, except the pitch and inflection, so after you
change voices you just need to manually raise the pitch or what ever to set
it straight.

On 2012-02-01 03 <tel:2012-02-01%2003> :18, Blake Roberts wrote:


Doris,
I discovered the other day that two Dectalks for NVDA exist. I was able to
try both out after obtaining them and reinstalling NVDA. Both NVDA-specific
Dectalks have issues. In the first one, only Paul is available as a voice.
To me, that version of Dectalk for NVDA sounds similar to 4.4, though I have
no idea what DT version it is based on. The second Dectalk for NVDA lists
all 9 voices, but apparently is based on another version of Dectalk. Some
of those voices sound, um, different. Example: Kipp sounds like he's going
through puberty or something similar. If anyone wants to experiment with/use
Dectalk for NVDA, write me off-list. As far as  I know, Dectalk for NVDA is
not officially supported by the NVDA developers and I don't know who created
Dectalks for NVDA.

Regarding Dectalk for Jaws, there is Dectalk Access32. Problem: Freedom
Scientific broke Dectalk Access32 functionality in an earlier version of
Jaws. Since a Jaws-specific version of Dectalk Access32 is no longer sold or
supported by FS, I sort of understand why  Freedom Scientific won't fix the
problem. Another member of this list found a workaround to make Dectalk
Access32 work with Jaws which involves uninstalling Eloquence.
Blake

-----Original Message-----
From: dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.
<mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com> com
[mailto:dectalk-bounces@ <mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com>
bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Doris and Chris
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 8:56 PM
To: DECtalk Discussions
Subject: [DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?

with all the discussion of singing dectalks, it was a couple of times
mentioned that dectalk version 4.4 is in the public domain.

Is there a version of this or can one be made available that works with
screenreaders?

I enjoy the dectalk songs I have heard and am amazed at the creativity and
finesse and perfection that goes into those songs but this is nothing I have
any interst in persuing myself .

I like dectalk for its clear speech and low footprint on older systems and I
would love to have a working version to use with my screenreaders, i.e. jaws
and nvda. For nvda especialy it would be nice to have a free dectalk
version. nvda comes with espeak, which is free and open source. espeak is
certainly usable and I like its responsibeness but dectalk has much clearer
speech and would be much easier to understand for those used to more human
sounding synths.

With all the time and energy devoted to making dectalk sing and talking
about this, if there is a public domain version of dectalk available, could
some of the time and energy be devoted to giving us a free dectalk to just
use with screenreaders or a free sapi version?
I do not know what would go into this but I'd like to see something that is
usable for the broader masses and especialy for nvda users.
nvda is coming of age and a decent free synth with it would be such a
blessing!

Doris





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