Hear2Read Kannada Text->Speech

Hear2Read Ⓡ Kannada Text-To-Speech (TTS) plug-in engine is a joint development by www.Hear2Read.org and Carnegie Mellon University.

It uses Android OS framework for 3rd party Text To Speech engines such that it can be used with any with TTS-enabled App to Read Kannada text by listening to machine generated synthetic speech.

Our primary goal is for this first release is to support reading Kannada books, web sites, e-mail, Word and text documents, SMS text, Facebook postings and WhatsApp messages etc. One can read Word or text documents using @Voice Aloud Reader (see below). It is not designed to work with MS Word or any other Office Apps using Talkback. This will be addressed in a future release.

The simplest way to use this TTS is with Apps (such as "@Voice Aloud Reader") that detect the content language and then select the appropriate engine rather than using the preferred engine and language under settings which is generally set to English.

Other Apps, such as "Voice Dream Reader", allow the user to select and associate a TTS Engine and language for the particular book. This selection is used instead of the preferred engine and language set under settings.

Android Talkback and certain Apps (such as GoRead book reader) use the preferred TTS Engine and language selected under settings. For these Apps, users need to select Hear2Read Engine and then select Kannada.

Since it does not speak English well, we recommend leaving the "preferred TTS Engine" as Google English TTS (default setting) unless you are able to understand are comfortable with the English spoken by Hear2Read App. You can try it by using the following steps to change the preferred TTS Engine setting:

Settings -> Language and Input -> Text-to-speech Output

Select Kannada Hear2Read as the Preferred engine

Touch the Gear symbol to display Language settings

If it does not show Kannada under Language, then touch Languages.

Select Kannada in the Pop Up box.

Back on the Text-to-speech output screen, touch "Listen to an example" to confirm. You should hear a Kannada sentence.

At this time, it can only speaks Kannada content correctly. English words (not numbers) embedded in Kannada text are spoken in English though not very well.well. It speaks numbers written in English (0.1, 2 ....9) in English.

Requires devices with 1 GB (or more) RAM and Android 4.2 or higher.

Permissions - SD card READ/WRITE access is required to store downloaded voices.

Please do not try to install this App on device with Cyanogen or rooted devices with OS changes outside of the OS upgrades released by Google. We have received several crash reports from such devices. The App makes extensive use of Android TTS APIs and other Android OS features that may not function properly on rooted devices or devices with Cyanogen.

We welcome your feedback. Please send comments and questions to Feedback@Hear2Read.org.

We invite users to rate the App. If you so, please add review comments as to the reason for the rating and how it can be improved it. If you like the App, please spread the word.

Thanks,

Hear2Read team

Note: Hear2Read is a registered trademark.