N1 Text-to-Speech - UK accent prob. Help!! - Nexus One General

Just throwing this one out there but wondering how people in the UK are getting on with the text-to-speech function.
I have an English accent and no matter what I do (change it from American to British in the menu, change it from slow to fast and everything in between), it just is terrible at figuring out what I am saying.
It seems a lot better when I am doing a quick internet search as I figure it then tried to match what I've said to other internet searches on Google's servers so that works ok. But when it comes to dictating text in an email or a text message, forget it. It just can't figure out a word of what I'm saying which is annoying because this is the feature I would use mostly.
In the menu options, there is an option to install a language setting but on my N1, that's just greyed out so I can't click on it..
Wondered if any other Brits are having the same problems and what they're doing to get it working.
(Incidentally, I did switch it back to American English, then spoke in a fake - and terrible quality - US accent and it was a lot more responsive but I feel like a bit of a buerk doing this!!)

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Lol this could make for some good comedic sketch

I could be wrong, but I would have thought that the Text to Speech options would apply to that - text to speech, rather than the text entry by voice which would be Speech to Text?
That said, I can't find anywhere to tweak the speech recognition - probably because it's done remotely by Google. I do know that if you have any way for the phone to detect your location enabled that it'll expect to hear a local accent.

t4tav said:
I'm one of those people that does not have an accent. Ask anyone where I come from, and all they know is that i'm British, No idea about an exact location though, Although, Im guessing they mean they can't tell because it's not clear...
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Lemme guess, down South?
Everyone has an accent, even if the southern one (mine included) is what's considered generic England.

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Cripes, if someone can't pick out a midlands accent they need their head looking at

Cripes.. Forgive me - that was a typo.. I meant speech-to-text...
My accent is very softly scouse but 90% accentless following years of living in London. It really does throw up a few weird matches!

I don't have an accent.. if's all those other places that do
Mine is probably a mixture of north cheshire and lancashire.. very mild by most accounts. The voice recognition is absolutely comically bad for me.
I remember similar conversions when the voice search first came out. I would have thought Google would have added options for different countries (ideally for regions given the variations that exist) but they haven't.

They should really have some sort of standard training phrases to calibrate the phone to your accent. Not so sure about the spoken quotation either, would be much better if it could distinguish pauses and long pauses during speech input.

Should have waited for the Vodaphone version

iVisionX01 said:
Should have waited for the Vodaphone version
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Not going to make a diference as speech to text uses google's server side to function. Let alone the phone itself has proper English (UK) localisation among many others.

philliplavelle said:
Cripes.. Forgive me - that was a typo.. I meant speech-to-text...
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Heheh
I wasn't trying to nitpick - my point was that there *is* no configuration for speech to text, just text to speech. Altering the speed and language for TTS is unlikely to affect speech recognition, though I may be wrong.
The only useful suggestion I have might to be to ensure you have UK English set up as your system locale and your keyboard locale. No idea if it'll make a difference, but it's worth a go!

Related

VoiceCommand US or UK

Hi
I recently moved to a Qtek S110 and wonder what the difference is betweens the two english VoiceCommand versions (US and UK). I used the US version on my iPAQ 5450 but not sure if I should use the UK one on my S110. ATM I live in Europe, cant the US version dial european numbers or what?
I mean, for example, a english speaking person living in Germany. He naturally wants the english VoiceCommand because the german one doesnt recognize english voice. BUT do the US or UK dial German numbers or does only the german one achieve that? I wonder if there is any diff in phone number format at all.
Besides the lenght of numbers has no limit. For example take landlines here in Berlin, the old ones has 7 digits and new ones have 8 digits. Put the area code in front and you have 10 or 11 and put country code in front and you end up with 12 or 13. Or take service numbers, they often have longer numbers, dont they work in VoiceCommand.
I really dont get the diff between the US and UK version atm. Please help.
Edit: The only diff I can find for the UK version: " This version, specifically designed for the United Kingdom, can recognize over 13 national dialects across the country including, for example, Welsh, Glaswegian and Scottish accents so that anyone in the U.K. can use natural speech to command their device." No word about number format etc.
Private-Cowboy said:
" This version, specifically designed for the United Kingdom, can recognize over 13 national dialects across the country including, for example, Welsh, Glaswegian and Scottish accents so that anyone in the U.K. can use natural speech to command their device."
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I expect that this is the explanation. Regional dialects in the US are very different from the UK.
UK numbers
Not sure about the other version, but the trial version of the US MS Voice Command wouldn't allow you to speak uk numbers, eg 01273 ... It was fine when you use the "Call so and so", but using the "Dial 01273..." just wouldn't work. The UK version works fine. The US version also required an american acent when saying "mobile", needed to be sound like "mobble", whereas the UK version is "MooBIle. The voice confirmation is also clearly more clipped than the drawlly american version.
Ok I tried the UK version and I must say the voice sounds a little different and it seems it can pick up my voice better than the US version does, strangely enough since I'm more american than european or british for that matter.
I still dont get that with the number format. I mean in the US we use numbers like 1-800-... but you dont spell the dashes you would spell "1800..." and that is exactly the same as UK or other european numbers. I mean normally the area codes here dont start with a 0 like they tend to do in europe but I doubt that VoiceCommand has problems with that. I'm pretty sure that is has nothing to do with the lenght of the number, I came across anything from 7 to 15+ digits so I cannot believe VoiceCommand would only accept 7 and 11 digits or whatever.
Maybe your problem is the pronounciation of "0", you could use "zero" or "oh" or even "null" (math.), dont know what VoiceCommand expects you to use.
By the way, has anyone ever used Fonix VoiceCentral???
Fonix is on my Magician and it seems a bit hit and miss so I hardly ever use it.
Thats what I thought. I find a few of the things from Fonix VoiceCentral pretty impressive but the execution seems very lacking. Despite that some of the basics are missing in Fonix. I think I'll stay with VoiceCommand for now.
By the way, the UK version really seems to work better. No idea why but I can now use it to dial phone numbers and with my two tests, it havent made a single mistake in a 12digit number and a 7digit one.
If you use the US version what happens when you say rubbish or pants? Don't answer that btw.....................
???
??? Whats "rubbish" ???
Pants is rubbish.
Rubbish is what you call trash.
Pants are what we call underwear and you call trousers
I know "pants" but "rubbish" is pretty new to me. Crazy brits :lol:
LOL, in Australia we use both Rubbish and Trash. Rubbish is still more common but as we become closer to our Prime Minister's goal of becoming another US state then Trash may be the word of choice :lol:
Haha, wanna switch? You wanna be the 50th state and we wanna be independant.

Voice SMS'ing

Does anybody know if there is a program where you can speak in to your phone and it writes the message as you speak it. Instead of typing. I would try search for it but I have no idea what it would be called.
Thanks.
Yeah that would be amazing if you could make a text just through voice recognition
Yeah..
Forgive my "Nieveness" but Isn't that what you use a Phone for?
I'd understand a Text to speech engine that reads off your Text messages. that is a good idea.
djfuego said:
Forgive my "Nieveness" but Isn't that what you use a Phone for?
I'd understand a Text to speech engine that reads off your Text messages. that is a good idea.
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ya, nokias already have that where they can read the messages to you. But It does not only include speaking in order to write messages. What about emails. It would save a lot of time if you have to write out an email on a htc diamond. Instead, just speak into the mic and it writes it all down for you.
keep working on this!
lofthouse91 said:
keep working on this!
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and you are talking to ?
Check out www.vlingo.com
They currently have software out for Iphone and Blackberry.
The WM release should be out here in the next few months from the information I have found online. My coworker has a blackberry and this software allows him to email, sms, etc. It's very accurate and does the job well. I myself can't wait for this to come out on the WM platform.
i have watch the video,its really coooool apps,i want this for my diamond!
do we have to wait few month for this
are there no other solution for wm users
i would love this app too
djfuego said:
Forgive my "Nieveness" but Isn't that what you use a Phone for?
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LOL - my thoughts exactly...
But on the Speech-To-Text subject - I'd suggest trialling voice recognition first (or Youtube some vid's on it )... more headaches than it's worth (if you have an Aussie accent at least!).

Voice Dialling

Really happy with the Hero but can't live without voice dialling for driving. Anyone got a good solution?
Yeah, I'd really be interested in this too, as I am so used to Voice Command on my former Touch HD.
paranoid2007 said:
Yeah, I'd really be interested in this too, as I am so used to Voice Command on my former Touch HD.
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Me too! would love something like voice command on my Hero.
there is a voice control in teh market, but it seems to only work properly if you speak v...e...r....y slowly, or in a southern US drawl.
scarlett o'hara would have no problem, but it doesn't seem to like my London/Dorset abomination of an English accent!
The app I think you are referring to is call TopVoiceControl which also allows you to activate other settings/open apps using your voice....
When you are installing it the app requires a TTS Service to be installed (well it did on my G2) You can set this TTS service to a UK English setting.
That said..... it seems to be very hit and miss and you do have to pronounce your words correctly.... not ideal...
Having seen the adverts for the iPhone 3GS with Voice activation I'd like to know if it is indeed as good as the ad or if it works when you are rattling along in your car?
It would be nice to see some further development in this area.
I'm new to Android but I believe that the G1 had a voice dialer which has since disappeared on 'Cupcake'. Can any one shed any light on this? Did it work?
MagnumPI said:
Having seen the adverts for the iPhone 3GS with Voice activation I'd like to know if it is indeed as good as the ad or if it works when you are rattling along in your car?
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No idea about in a car but certainly in a quieter environment two different people with the 3gs have both told me it dosnt just retry / fail most of the time to recognise the spoken contact name, instead it just picks a random contact to call instead.
I wanna know too if there's a solution because I wanna use bluetooth headset dialing.
Perhaps the feature will be restored via a custom rom soon.
Dragging up a slightly old topic I know... but isn't there even voice tagging on the Hero?

[Q] Bilangual autocorrection

Hello everybody,
I thought I should give Windows 8 a try as well and I can say I do infact like it But one Thing that bugs me is the autocorrection. Is it possible, to set the dictionary to two languages? Everytime a write an english text, random words get capitalized when they are recognized as german. I do sometimes Switch to the english Keyboard layout, however there are most of the Special keys different located. Is it possible to use both, the english and german dictionary in the autocorrection feature?
Regards
Chris
I had a run-in with this very same problem a couple of weeks ago. In my case, I am Portuguese, but I do write quite a lot of English (as you can plainly see from this very post... lol).
I went about trying to find a way to do exactly as you want. From what I could find out, as of right now your keyboard layout is directly linked with your input language; also, you can't have more than one language per keyboard layout. There is a 1:1 ratio there.
Which, in short, means we're stuck with that odd behavior in Windows 8 (either we keep separate keyboards, memorize multiple keyboard layouts, get auto-corrected for the wrong language or disable spelling altogether - which, quite frankly, I don't even know if it's possible). And I'm not too bad, at least we don't need to capitalize every noun in Portuguese (that has to be a pain in the behind to work through with the spell-check...), we just get A LOT of red underlined words.
I have, however, already submitted a bug report/feature request for that issue. I had to go around and install the Feedback Report Tool for Internet Explorer 10 (if memory serves me right), and navigate a few options, but I could do it. If you can, try and submit it too, there are bound to be quite a lot of people who are in the same boat as ourselves...
Hope this helps.
Miguel

Help with college project

Hello guys....well I need some idea with my 3rd year college project...it has to be an useful app and not a game or something:laugh:
My professor came up with 2 topics::
1>>USB-to-USB android connection for file transfer...unlike wireless ......and I do not have any idea how to do that...I mean I searched around and found that there is a way to connect 2 devices via Master-Slave method in this forum but that uses an app and I cannot use that app...neither can I find any tutorial on this matter
2>>Optimistic algorithm...I don't exactly know what that means...I mean how to implement it in an app...
I have thought of one...but I guess that exists...anyways,my idea is a dialer app that searches contacts according to your preference...by name,by last called,by frequently called...making calling on your phone a little easier...also I was thinking of implementing this in a popup manner...where the dialer does not accomodate the full screen but only a portion making the user able to search for a contact and do other activities together....
I know it is a long post but please read and do suggest if you have any ideas...thank you developers :good:
I like option 2. Option 1 seems pointless to me from a useful point of view.
What kind of help do you need for option 2?
My thoughts for the dialer would be a predictive dialer like you described. Store call information in a database about your dialing habits, that will help you predict who you are trying to call. ie - dialed frequency, call length, dialed time of day/day of week.
zalez said:
I like option 2. Option 1 seems pointless to me from a useful point of view.
What kind of help do you need for option 2?
My thoughts for the dialer would be a predictive dialer like you described. Store call information in a database about your dialing habits, that will help you predict who you are trying to call. ie - dialed frequency, call length, dialed time of day/day of week.
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Yeah, that's a cool idea. But hasn't this been done before?
I'm sure it has but use one's imagination and expand on current ones. It wouldn't be any different than the many different launchers or keyboards.

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