Accessing content through our ears is the new trend. We get that from smart speakers, voice assistants, smart homes and other popular speech technologies. However, they all primarily focus on some English speakers. So what’s left for non-English natives, such as Asians? We will bring them three free text readers to listen to information aloud.
After watching ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, we all probably relate an Asian accent to Chinese. Others may even associate it with Japanese. But the truth is Asia, the world’s biggest and most populated continent (covering over 30% of the Earth’s total land area and 8.7% of its total surface area, with 4.7 billion people accounting for nearly 60% of the world’s population), consists of 48 nations. Some of them are China, Japan, India, Vietnam, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Therefore, this article will look for text readers that enfold at least several of these accents. Point of start? Text to speech. Text To Speech (TTS) is a fundamental component of voice technologies. It’s the voice part, precisely. TTS transforms text-based data into an artificial human discourse. As a result, it allows individuals to hear websites’, books’, documents’, etc., content: our text reader.
Luckily, advancements in Text To Speech assets have drawn it near actual lifelike speech– no more rankling, robotic voices. And there are tons of them online. Nevertheless, these were our favourite (free!) picks with Asian accents:
Woord
Woord‘s AI voice generator produces high-quality audio in 28 languages, including Asian accents like Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, South Korean and Vietnamese. In total, it offers 50 –male, female and nonbinary– speakers that resemble human’s natural voices.
Furthermore, Woord is a feature-rich programme encompassing OCR technology, MP3 download, Chrome extension, API access, advanced audio settings and an SSML editor. Overall, it can convert plain text, pdf, txt, doc(x), pages, odt, ppt(x), ods, non-DRM epub, jpg, and png files into realistic voices. Try it for free by signing up. Your account will permit you to utilise up to 20,000 characters of text per month to create up to two audios.
Azure Microsoft
Azure Microsoft is a service that converts text into superbly realistic voices across 270 diverse speakers who speak 119 distinct languages and dialects. It will surprise you how many accents it enfolds! Plus, users may customise the tempo, tone, pronunciation, pauses and other aspects to suit their ears’ liking.
Accordingly, Azure Microsoft gives you access to whatever speech style or emotional tone you require. The free plan may have some limitations in terms of features, though. Yet, it does allow for 0.5 million characters and 5 hours of audio every month.
LOVO
LOVO is a straightforward TTS tool, requiring three steps for the perfect voiceover for any form of content. Firstly, pick a speaker among 180+ voices in 33 languages to match your content type and tone. Secondly, type or upload your text. Thirdly, hit play.
Moreover, LOVO allows you to finetune your narrator by changing speed, adding emphases to words, and playing around with pauses to make the voices even livelier and more natural. Thus, users can get high-quality AI voiceovers in seconds. Access its studio for free and obtain limitless conversion and listening.
Do you know more free text readers with an Asian accent? Share them with us through the comments!