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Chinese mistakes in commercial speech synthesizers
Commercial unit-selection voices may sound pleasant, but they do make mistakes. If you use one for language learning, be sure that it is not your only source. For example Gradint has a function to alternate between different synthesizers on different repeats (it also has a syllable-based voice which should at least be predictable).To demonstrate the trouble with unit-selection voices for language learning, below are some example Chinese mistakes that I found, usually after just a few minutes of experimenting with each voice.
| Synthesizer | Input | Problem |
|---|---|---|
| Google Translate (2011-05, using SVOX Yun which is also used by Android) | 继续学院 | The 学 is only half-pronounced. It seems like they had a recording of a whole 学 but some program played only half of it. You can't really hear the '-ue' of the 'xue'. |
| 糖尿病 | 'n' of 尿 unclear | |
| 深省 | Google correctly says this is "shēn xǐng", but its voice incorrectly says "shēn shěng" (the voice must be using a smaller dictionary than the transcriber) | |
| 绝 | somewhat unclear when spoken in isolation | |
| Beijing Infoquick SinoVoice (2011-05; online trial no longer available) | 用出来 | The main word 用 could be clearer; at least 来 (and possibly 出) should be neutral tone (轻声) but isn't |
| iFlyTek InterPhonic / Bider SpeechPlus (free trial no longer available) | bao3zheng4, bian4ming2, fou3ren4, jia3ru2, mei3zhou1, mu4du3, many others (via CSSML pinyin markup) | Incorrect syllables spoken (I'd have thought pinyin gives better control but it doesn't) |
| Neospeech Hui (2011-05, rebranded as ReadSpeaker Mandarin Female in 2019 then back to Hui end-2024) | 糖尿病 | 'n' of 尿 unclear |
| 奉公守法 | first syllable unclear | |
| ScanSoft (Nuance) MeiLing (also used by Nokia) | 深省 | 省 spoken as shěng instead of xǐng; no way to add a dictionary entry to override it |
| 地, 行 and many other ambiguous hanzi | Engine often gets the wrong reading (e.g. dì instead of de in many adverbs, xíng instead of háng in 十四行诗), no way to override (except sometimes by writing wrong hanzi) | |
| 邮编 | 编 pitch too low for the context | |
| 切合实际，对 | 际 in 切合实际 by itself is correctly pronounced jì, but when followed by | |
| 絶 (variant of 絕/绝), 説 (variant of 說/说) and others | completely skipped, with no indication that there is a missing character in the text | |
| 用户界面 | 界 sounds too much like 3rd tone instead of 4th tone | |
| 齁声 | Pitch falls from B to E-flat. Some drop in pitch of tone 1 at the end of a phrase is acceptable, but an augmented fifth? (Compare 中东, 拼车, etc) | |
| 人文学 | Faults on 文 (but not in 人文 by itself). Sounds better if incorrectly written as 人闻学. | |
| 撞击 | 击 sounds like a truncated neutral tone instead of tone 1 | |
| 电脑及资讯科技 | something like half a 个 is inserted before the 及 | |
| 劫难 | sounds more like jián'àn than jiénàn (it must be a coded exception to 难's usual nán pronunciation but it seems the syllable boundary is wrong) | |
| 没有论文登出就垮台 | 文 truncated | |
| 耳闻 | ěr sounds like èr | |
| Microsoft Lili (couldn't test but heard a demo) | 才 | spoken as an unclear cǎi instead of cái (the old "MS Simplified Chinese" voice actually gets this one right but gets 央行 wrong) |
| Neospeech Lily (no longer sold separately but used by NextSpeak and ImTranslator 2011-05 without the lexicon access) | 糖尿病 | 'n' of 尿 very unclear |
| yong4chu5lai5, zhuan3lai2zhuan3qu4 (via pinyin lexicon) | Incorrectly read as yòngchūlai, zhuǎilái... but OK if input as hanzi 用出来, 转来转去 | |
| chan3chu2 or 铲除 | says chù instead of chú | |
| shan4yong4 or 善用 | shèn instead of shàn in pinyin; "n"s clipped in hanzi | |
| li4bi4 or 利弊 | sounds like bībì | |
| you2bian1 or 邮编 | biān pitch too low for the context | |
| jia1de5fu1 | spoken as jiādìfū (maybe it's being treated as 加的夫, which might be right but a pinyin override shouldn't try to guess what the pinyin should have been; what if it came from 家的夫?) | |
| Loquendo Lisheng (2011; interactive demo no longer available) | mu4du3, mu4du4. | both words seem to end in dù (the du3 sounds OK if it's the last thing in the sentence) |
| Apple Ting-ting (in OS 10.7, retested in 11 and 12) | 乐 | always spoken as yuè even in words like 快乐 and 乐意 when it should be lè (fixed before macOS 11.4; these and other dictionary mistakes---pó instead of fán in 繁体字, etc---are forgivable because the voice can work reasonably well from pinyin) |
| mu4du3, mu4du4 | Both "du" sounds seem incomplete | |
| yue4du2 | dú fails to rise in pitch | |
| zhi1 di4 | dì sounds too neutral ("fa2 zhi1 di4" is worse as this zhī is high by comparison) | |
| jing4qi2li3 | q sounds like x in this context | |
| ming2 que4 | què glitches in mid-syllable (it's OK when said in isolation) | |
| jing1juan4 | juan sounds like a garbled jue (can also sound like jue in contexts e.g. jing1juan4ming2) | |
| chang3kai1 | chǎng sounds like a tone 1 higher than the kāi; if doubled to 敞开敞开, the second chǎng is better but is almost a full third tone instead of a half | |
| kou3 zheng1guo1 | guo sounds almost like gua (zheng1guo1 by itself is better except the pitch falls nearly a major sixth) | |
| cheng2qiang2 tan1ta1 | q becomes like x + pitch drop at end | |
| qu3dai4 | tones not clear | |
| ying3 pian4 | n dropped (better in context) |
Copyright and Trademarks
All material © Silas S. Brown unless otherwise stated.Android is a trademark of Google LLC.
Apple is a trademark of Apple Inc.
Baidu is a trademark of Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd.
Google is a trademark of Google LLC.
Loquendo is a trademark of Loquendo S.p.A.
Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp.
ScanSoft and Nuance are trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc.
Any other trademarks I mentioned without realising are trademarks of their respective holders.