Can Hebrew be used with TextToSpeech and YandexTranslate

[Ron Barak]

When I try the following (i.e., spoken Hebrew) in ai2, I hear nothing:

However, the following (switching parameters to spoken English) works just fine:

Note that I change the variables "language", "country", "setance", and "hebrew_sentance" to switch between spoken English (which succeeds) and spoken Hebrew (which fails).

Is it possible to get ai2 to speak Hebrew?

[SteveJG]

The languages are those supported by Google Android.   Hebrew does not appear to be one of the possibilities in the AI2 Text to Speech 

Here are the language and country codes you can use. The codes are organized first by language; then, in each language section are a list of possible country codes:

• ces (Czech)
  • CZE


• spa (Spanish)
  • ESP
  • USA
  
  
• deu (German)
  • AUT
  • BEL
  • CHE
  • DEU
  • LIE
  • LUX


• fra (French)
  • BEL
  • CAN
  • CHE
  • FRA
  • LUX


• nld (Dutch)
  • BEL
  • NLD


• ita (Italian)
  • CHE
  • ITA


• pol (Polish)
  • POL


• eng (English)
  • AUS
  • BEL
  • BWA
  • BLZ
  • CAN
  • GBR
  • HKG
  • IRL
  • IND
  • JAM
  • MHL
  • MLT
  • NAM
  • NZL
  • PHL
  • PAK
  • SGP
  • TTO
  • USA
  • VIR
  • ZAF
  • ZWE

Yandex translates 44 languages, Edit:  Hebrew is one of them:  https://translate.yandex.com/  

Here are some possibilities for TTS, perhaps by substitution one of these TTS engines in your device, you might get a Hebrew capability:  https://www.google.com/search?q=android+translate+hebrew&oq=android+translate+hebrew&aqs=chrome..69i57.5231j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=android+hebrew+text+to+speech 

Will the above TTS work with AI2?    I do not know.  One of the options in the Google search thread on Google Play MIGHT work for you.

If you are successful, please return a post your results.  If unsuccessful, let us know what you find out.  Thank you.

App Inventor is currently being translated into 17 languages, only several available at the moment.  Unfortunately Hebrew is not among the languages.  The AI team might consider if it can find volunteers to translate to Hebrew.   Just post a message saying so.  All translators are volunteers.  Is Hebrew possible?   Don't know, just ask.

Regards,

Steve

[Taifun]

according to this statement https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mitappinventortest/r6JL0jrlR-Q/_LCn1qzRQqsJ of SteveJG Hebrew is available?

so where do we get a list of supported languages?

Taifun

[Taifun]

I just went to https://translate.yandex.com/   and found Hebrew as supported language

Taifun

[SteveJG]

Sri guys, yes Hebrew is there on Yandex.  Blame it on my trifocals.   good luck Ron.  Guess I did not remember the 42 languages or my original post; incidentally Yandex is up to 44.

[Ron Barak]

Can you verify if I understand all the above correctly:
the reason I hear nothing when the input for AI2 Text to Speech is in Hebrew is because AI2 TTS does not support Hebrew?

[Ron Barak]

1. Thanks for the input of ai2 TTS state-of-the-art, Steve.
   Seems that until Hebrew is added to ai2 TTS, I need to find an alternative that can make ai2 talk in Hebrew: does such an alternative exist?
   
2. As for translating to Hebrew: I can give back to ai2, but am not sure what it entails and if my skill-set is up to the task. Can you detail (offline to ai2heb....@9ox.net) the requirements and expectations?

[SteveJG]

1)  Can you verify if I understand all the above correctly: 

the reason I hear nothing when the input for AI2 Text to Speech is in Hebrew is because AI2 TTS does not support Hebrew?

Possibly correct, AI2's TextToSpeech component does not support Hebrew. However, you should hear something.  Perhaps your Android device does not have a TTS engine installed?

For this app to work, you'll need to load a text-to-speech module, Text-To-Speech Extended , on your phone. App Inventor and other apps rely on this module for the underlying voice synthesis. If you don't already have it, you can download onto your phone using the Android Market:

• On your phone, open the Market app
• Search for TTS
• Select the app Text-To-Speech Extended to install

Once the Text-To-Speech module is installed, open it to test its features. When it opens, set the default language as desired. Then select "Listen to Preview". If you don't hear anything, make sure the volume on your phone is turned on. You can also change the default Engine which can enhance the quality of the spoken words.

Once the Text-To-Speech module is installed and configured as desired, you can use the TextToSpeech component within App Inventor. 

Here is a very basic tutorial..very basic and it may help you get TTS working, at least in English  http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/sites/all/files/hourofcode/TalkToMePart1.pdf

There may be alternatives to using TTS with Hebrew in an AI2 app (or perhaps not).  I mentioned in a previous post: Here are some possibilities for TTS, perhaps by substitution one of these TTS engines in your device, you might get a Hebrew capability:  https://www.google.com/search?q=android+translate+hebrew&oq=android+translate+hebrew&aqs=chrome..69i57.5231j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=android+hebrew+text+to+speech  

How these tools would work, I do not know.  I have not tried them.  These are Android apps that say they can speak in Hebrew.  It might be possible to use them in conjunction with AI2.   I do not know how.  It may be as simple as installing them and then from the Android settings, changing the device's TTS speech engine but it may be more difficult.

Hope something here is helpful.   You need to do a little reading and experimenting to get this to work.

Good luck.

Regards,

Steve

[Ron Barak]

On Friday, December 19, 2014 4:42:15 PM UTC+2, SteveJG wrote:

1)  Can you verify if I understand all the above correctly: 
the reason I hear nothing when the input for AI2 Text to Speech is in Hebrew is because AI2 TTS does not support Hebrew?

Possibly correct, AI2's TextToSpeech component does not support Hebrew. However, you should hear something.  Perhaps your Android device does not have a TTS engine installed?

Unlikely, as the emulator.exe I use does perform TTS for other languages (I tested TTS with en/fr/es). 

...

There may be alternatives to using TTS with Hebrew in an AI2 app (or perhaps not).  I mentioned in a previous post: Here are some possibilities for TTS, perhaps by substitution one of these TTS engines in your device, you might get a Hebrew capability:  https://www.google.com/search?q=android+translate+hebrew&oq=android+translate+hebrew&aqs=chrome..69i57.5231j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=android+hebrew+text+to+speech  

I tried to find data on how to get apk's to load on emulator.exe, but the results were sketchy: can these alternatives be used with the ai2 emulator.exe - which is my device?

...

Steve

[SteveJG]

Regarding:

2)  As for translating to Hebrew: I can give back to ai2, but am not sure what it entails and if my skill-set is up to the task. Can you detail the requirements and expectations?

Like to keep the discussion here in the forum Ron.     Translating should be possible using the Yandtex component which is described Here:  http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/reference/components/media.html#YandexTranslate  

YandexTranslate

Use this component to translate words and sentences between different languages. This component needs Internet access, as it will request translations to the Yandex.Translate service. Specify the source and target language in the form source-target using two letter language codes. So"en-es" will translate from English to Spanish while "es-ru" will translate from Spanish to Russian. If you leave out the source language, the service will attempt to detect the source language. So providing just "es" will attempt to detect the source language and translate it to Spanish.

This component is powered by the Yandex translation service. See http://api.yandex.com/translate/ for more information, including the list of available languages and the meanings of the language codes and status codes.      You will need to find the codes from here for Hebrew, then try some blocks... if you have issues, post a screen capture of your Yandex blocks and someone will probably provide some advice

Note: Translation happens asynchronously in the background. When the translation is complete, the "GotTranslation" event is triggered.

Properties

none

Events

GotTranslation(text responseCode, text translation)

Event triggered when the Yandex.Translate service returns the translated text. This event also provides a response code for error handling. If the responseCode is not 200, then something went wrong with the call, and the translation will not be available.

Methods

RequestTranslation(text languageToTranslateTo, text textToTranslate)

By providing a target language to translate to (for instance, 'es' for Spanish, 'en' for English, or 'ru' for Russian), and a word or sentence to translate, this method will request a translation to the Yandex.Translate service. Once the text is translated by the external service, the event GotTranslation will be executed. Note: Yandex.Translate will attempt to detect the source language. You can also specify prepending it to the language translation. I.e., es-ru will specify Spanish to Russian translation.

..again, Ron, you need to do some experimenting. Here is a video showing how to use the component:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9O6stYSDUQ

and this link provides some other sources  https://www.google.com/search?q=app+inventor+yandex&oq=app+inventor+yandex&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i64l3j69i61j69i60.7359j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

good luck.

Regards,

Steve

[Ron Barak]

On Friday, December 19, 2014 4:51:12 PM UTC+2, SteveJG wrote:

Regarding:

1. As for translating to Hebrew: I can give back to ai2, but am not sure what it entails and if my skill-set is up to the task. Can you detail the requirements and expectations?

Like to keep the discussion here in the forum Ron.     Translating should be possible using the Yandtex component which is described Here:  http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/reference/components/media.html#YandexTranslate  

Steve, by translating I was referring to your comment:

"App Inventor is currently being translated into 17 languages, only several available at the moment.  Unfortunately Hebrew is not among the languages.  The AI team might consider if it can find volunteers to translate to Hebrew.   Just post a message saying so.  All translators are volunteers.  Is Hebrew possible?   Don't know, just ask." 

Thus, I might have misunderstood you when I thought you were seeking volunteers to translate ai2 to Hebrew.
(note that I'm not trying to implement translation to Hebrew in my ai2 app, but am trying to get ai2 TTS to speak Hebrew).

[SteveJG]

Sorry for the misunderstanding Ron.    Well, a possible way to get AI2 to use Hebrew through using one of the TTS engines described in the post is there...but you got to experiment.

Regarding your offer to translate the AI2 documentation/buttons etc. to Hebrew ... I just forwarded this to one of the guys involved in the current project.  It may be possible to add Hebrew to that ongoing effort.   You should get a response from him.

Regards,

Steve

[Ron Barak]

On Friday, December 19, 2014 5:23:04 PM UTC+2, SteveJG wrote:

...

Regarding your offer to translate the AI2 documentation/buttons etc. to Hebrew ... 

From my experimentations: current ai2 version doesn't object to have Hebrew used for label, button, and variable names, as well as in values (probably as part of its unicode support).

[M. Hossein Amerkashi]

@Ron, regarding 

Regarding your offer to translate the AI2 documentation/buttons, we are using Pootle server HERE. We'll have Tiffany contact you regarding translation.

-Hossein.

http://Amerkashi.Wordpress.com

[SteveJG]

That is correct, users can use any language they want in the buttons etc. as long at they are imported in UTF-8 format.

What the offer to translate would involve is changing the language the user uses to program in.  On the AI2 Browser, look for the Globe on the upper right of the screen (next to the Report an issue menu item.  Click on it and you will discover that it is possible to currently use English, Spanish and two dialects of Chinese to 'program' in.

@Hossein... thanks for the current link and getting back to Ron.

--Steve