I’ve just deployed a big change to how Readlang’s voices work. This adds new MS Azure generated voices and allows selecting from the same set of voices for both Auto-Pronounce (previously Speaking Mode) and for Read Aloud. Read more about this here: Better voices in Readlang - Readlang Blog
This is great news, especially for mobile!
If you’re updating voices, would you consider adding a male Hong Kong accent for Cantonese (yue-CN-YunsongNeural) ? As a male cantonese learner, it’s much harder for me to shadow the tones when the voice is so much higher pitch than my own.
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Wow this works great! Thanks Steve, this is a terrific boost for using Readlang on my iPhone.
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I’ve just added a LOT more voices across all the languages, including this one.
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oh my god, just pressed play on the text that didn’t have audio (and expected to hear those low-quality voices) and discovered they’ve been updated. i’m shocked! thanks a lot Steve!
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I was literally just fantasizing about an update like this. So helpful. Thank you!
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I’m having a problem with read aloud in Edge.
When reading in Japanese, it can’t detect any browser voices in the settings, and trying to use the browser’s own read aloud doesn’t work (the bar appears at the top of the screen, but pressing play does nothing).
When reading in French, only the non-France voices (Canada, Switzerland, etc) work.
I tested the browser’s read aloud on other sites, and both Japanese and French (France) work fine, so it seems like a Readlang issue.
I’m also having trouble with getting my texts to be read aloud since this update. I’ve changed the Swedish auto-pronounce voice to Sofie, which is working beautifully and is so much better than the old robotic voice. Thank you so much for this!
However, using Read Aloud has been really hit and miss since the update. I’m a Premium user, not Premium Plus so I need to stick with my in-built Swedish voice for Read Aloud. It worked fine (albeit wasn’t nice to listen to) before the update. After the update, initially the play button for Read Aloud just wasn’t there at the bottom of the screen. When I went into the settings, they said I had no browser voices available for my language even though I always did before. That seemed to spontaneously fix itself within a couple of days, and I could use Read Aloud again.
Unfortunately, I am now finding that although my Read Aloud settings show that Sweden Swedish is there as my chosen voice (and the only one available to me), it just won’t play. The play button is there at the bottom of the screen. Pressing it results in the first word being highlighted in brown like usual, but then… nothing. No sound. No movement of the highlighted word, it just fades but never goes on to the next sentence. If I change the Auto-Pronounce setting back to the in-built Sweden Swedish then that doesn’t work either - I get the green highlight and the translation but no sound.
I mostly use Readlang via Chrome (but having added it to my home screen as recommended, so it opens like an app) on an Android phone. My phone’s sound is definitely turned on and I can play media from other sites within the Chrome browser.
It still works fine on my Android tablet and on my Onyx Boox device, but I’m getting nowhere on my phone. This may well be a browser issue rather than a Readlang issue, but I had no problems at all until this Readlang update so thought I’d flag it.