I have the IPA pronunciation for a word which I would like to audibly play back to the user.
Can this be done using the built-in TTS engine? If not, is there a TTS engine out there that does support it?
As far as I know, this cannot be done and there is no app that supports this. The TTS engine supports only English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish (EFIGS).
Unless you have some linguistic knowledge, you are probably out of luck. If you do, you could probably try to map the IPA to the most appropriate language (or maybe try Italian) and see how bad it is.
Ivona supports this. They do have a free app for Android. It is a bit hard to setup, but perhaps this will get you going in a helpful direction.
Related
I'm trying to do a TextoToSpeech program in Android Studio but I want it to get a word and say it in another language(portuguese) that is not listed when I hit CTRL+SPACE.
How do I set this new language?
Well, It's related to the TTS Engine, there is a lot of engines like the Google TTS Engine, You can change language to speak by using setLanguage() function. Lot of languages are supported like Canada, French, Chinese, Germany etc.,but if the 'portuguese' language does not appear so you can not add it using this engine, so i suggest you to change your engine, there are a lot of engines, try to use Ekho engine, or find what engine support the portuguese language!!
tts.setLanguage(Locale.CHINESE); // Chinese language
I hope it will help you, best regards
I'm not sure how or where to ask this question, but I guess lots of experienced android developers here could point me in the correct direction.
What I would like is to give my users to customize their type of font/typeface. But, as the application got users from all around the world, with all kind of languages and charsets, I don't know what typefaces/fonts that supports this. I need fonts that support chinese, english/latin, cryllic, russian, arabic, etc etc... For now, I only use the default font on android, as Im not sure if any other fonts supports all these international characters. (I use utf8)
Anyone got some tips ?
This is regarding android application.
As per my analysis, the translation from Google translate is not perfect.
Will it be ok show non-english users a dialog with the following content:
This application has been translated by using Google Translate and
hence could have translation issues. If you see translation problems
in your language, please switch to English locale on your device. If
possible, help us in fixing language translation problems noticed by
you
This question is from the perspective to quality and usability of app by non-english speakers who have set the locale as non-english on their android device.
I would try to find somebody that can translate it into proper English.
Expensive: Supertext
Cheap: MyGengo
But even the cheapest MyGengo translations are normally better than Google. If you app is something professional, I would invest into a real professional translation. Otherwise your usability goes down the drain.
I have a game in the Google Play Store that has an option to change the scoring system from points to $'s. Apparently this is a simulation of gambling and illegal in South Korea. I got a official reprimand from Google and they took my app off of the Korean market and raised my maturity rating to "Mature". This extra feature is totally unnecessary for the game play though many users enjoy it. I would like to disable it only in Korea. However I need some way that is reliable.
I though about using locale but the user could change that.
context.getResources().getConfiguration().locale.getDisplayCountry(Locale locale);
I found this:
android.telephony.TelephonyManager.getNetworkCountryIso()
Would the country ISO be guaranteed to be correct? Is there a different method that I am overlooking?
Also, I don't have GPS permission for my app. I think it would be wrong to enable it just for this use case. In addition I have thought about multiple APKs. This would be a last resort. I believe that they would be treated as two separate apps. I would not have all my good ratings and downloads.
Hopefully if I get this working I can have Google reconsider their decision.
Edit: #Nobu Games brings up an excellent point. This does need to work for tablet also.
android.telephony.TelephonyManager.getNetworkCountryIso()
Absolutely
I think locale option is not good, as one can change locale manually, there is a app to do it.
I tried it once. for testing multiple language support for my app.
This answer can help you more.
I have the patience to convert my strings.xml file and my HTML help files to other languages using Google Translation Toolkit.
However, the translations are not "100%" correct.
I speak German as well as English so used the Eng -> Ger translation for my strings.xml etc.
Some of the "gaffs" made by the translator were pretty bad.
So, is it better to have 1 language done well (ie English) or to also provide multi language support but for languages I have no idea about whatsoever.
I wanted to cover the "big boys" too such as Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese, Russian, etc but am worrying bad translations would make my app seem to be of a low quality.
Has anybody any experience and words of advice on the topic.
Many thanks.
Paul.
You should probably hire translator(s) which are very good at the English and target foreign language(s).
One of the most important things is that translator must understand usage, concepts and conventions of your application - know it and understand it. Otherwise, you will end up with grammatically correct but meaningless translations in context of your app - I can see this in a lot of cases since my native language is not English.
And, yes, your app will look "low quality" and "hostile" to SOME people if it has translations that are missing the point.
German and English belong to the same language family and Google has ample data for both. Any other language, especially those that are linguistically a lot more distant (Chinese, Japanese, Hindi), is translated even worse than German. I do not believe that native speakers of these languages can get ANY value out of a machine translation.
Using a machine translation shows your foreign customers exactly how much value you place on them: none.
Wow !.
It looks like a thumbs down then.
Like all things in life I suppose "compromise" is the winner.
My app basically has a single setup screen with about 15 strings and a few radio buttons, check boxes etc.
The games themselves are pretty obvious but underating the "gist" is better than no understanding at all.
I'll focus on getting the strings for the setup page "perfect" and add the HTML "help" screen translations with fingures crossed.
I am of the view that is one goes to a country one should at leasr learn some of the language. My experience is that the "natives" appreciate an "attempt to speak theor tongue" rather than simply assuming "they" should understand English. By the same philosophy, if the "main" points are translated well, I should at least earn a few more points for "having a go to respect their language and culture" by going through the translation process of "all supplied help text".
As I say, it is a tricky area to know what to do. If my app did take off I would not hesitate to have professional translations done but the initial outlay price for, say, 20 translations could well wipe out any return. In 2 months I'll be older and wiser (if only in expletives from people who are insulted by the translations).
I'd love to hear any other responses from people who have had the same dilemma and to know their real life "app" experiences in this area.
A genuine thankyou to those who have so far written..
Paul
If your app is targeted at people who know english (geeks, system administrators, other computer people) then you better use english only UI.
Other way, if you target "common" audience you have to decide what do you want - bigger "client base" or higher app rating (because no annoyed people will rate your app 1 star because of bad l10n).
I'm russian myself and I can tell you that for me badly localized app is much more annoying than english app. But people who does not know english (there are a lot of them) will never install english-only app.