31/01/2013 - CereProc's Wonder Emporium of Text-to-Speech - Beastly Antics
There are two monkeys in a bath. One says "Ooh ooh ah ah ah!" The other says "If its too hot, put some cold in!"
We know that birds sing, dogs bark, and horses neigh, but what are they all on about?! There has always been a fascination with the ways in which animals communicate with each other. They seem to convey meaning, but a meaning we can not truly access. Research is happening right now around the world to decipher the meaning of the sounds that particular species make. Just as speech synthesis technology can be used to simulate a human voice - and any particular voice at that (see Cloning Voices) - we can also use this technology to simulate and recombine the sounds that animals make.
In this exhibit we are delighted to play you output from two animal synthesisers. The noises made by the animals have been mapped onto the English language so that a different sentence will create a different series of animal noises. Pretty amazing, huh?
Below is our voice talent Raul giving directions. To help those of you less versed in the skill of dog language we show the text as it is rendered.
Can you work out what directions Raul is giving in the examples below?:
In our next exhibit we return to the human voice and look at how speech synthesis can be used to edit and modify natural speech: I Said What!
In case you missed them, here's the Wonder Emporium Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.