Separate TTS languages for directions and street names

[J.R. Oldroyd]

I often use OsmAnd when I am abroad.  In that case, I tend to leave OsmAnd voice navigation announcements in my own language.

One thing that gets annoying is when OsmAnd's voice navigation instructs me to e.g. "In 300 meters, turn left on to Xyz Street" but it pronounces the Xyz Street name in my language, rather than in the local language.  While this can be somewhat amusing, it is often hard to understand what the instruction may have been.

Would it be possible to add support for mixed TTS output in voice navigation, where the instructions are spoken in my chosen language, and the locality is spoken in the local language?

Thanks.

[Mirco Zorzo]

This is interesting.

[Antti Teliö]

That's a great idea. I'm often annoyed by this also.

[Alexander]

I totally agree. It is totally impossible to understand what was meant by the instruction. Therefore, in countries where I understand the local language I switch to that language. (That of course would not help me with Chinese or Hungarian.) So I absolutely support this change. However, the only possible drawback will be a change of speaker in the middle of the sentence, sometimes from male to female voice, etc. which also could be distracting. Unless, the same voice existed for a couple of languages. But yes, PLEASE implement this.

[JeCh]

In iGo is an option to announce in foreign countries only street numbers or nothing at all. This would also be a better solution then to have German street names announced with Czech TTS voice which reads it totally wrong.

[P Wat]

I also agree.
An example we experienced in Cyprus.
The English instruction would begin; "... turn left into " and then spelt out the entire Greek name phonetically; "Lambda, Epsilon, Omega, Psi, ...", etc.  Weird and confusing.
Local place names in local language would be more helpful.  A change of voice, if unavoidable, would be a small price to pay, and might even be useful.
PW

[Andreas Kirchwitz]

On Sunday, June 21, 2015 at 10:16:02 PM UTC+2, J.R. Oldroyd wrote:

One thing that gets annoying is when OsmAnd's voice navigation instructs me to e.g. "In 300 meters, turn left on to Xyz Street" but it pronounces the Xyz Street name in my language, rather than in the local language.  While this can be somewhat amusing, it is often hard to understand what the instruction may have been.

Yes, that's so true! When driving a car it also can be pretty distracting. Funny thing is that some expensive car navigation systems have the very same problem. :-)

However, pronounciation in the local language would require to have the appropriate TTS files installed. Unfortunately, that might not be the case for most countries.

An solution might be to only announce street names if the proper TTS file is installed.

Personally, I prefer to disable those announcements completely. There's a configuration option available for that (default is enabled). In a foreign country the street names don't mean anything. It's too much information, at least for car navigation where instructions must be short, clear and precise. That's also the way some professional car navigation systems work.

[poutnik]

There is also need to have TTS software module for target language installed in device. Having TTS file is not enough.

6. července 2015 1:54:24 CEST, Andreas Kirchwitz <kirc...@gmail.com> napsal:

>

>However, pronounciation in the local language would require to have the
>
>appropriate TTS files installed. Unfortunately, that might not be the
>case
>for most countries.
>
>An solution might be to only announce street names if the proper TTS
>file
>is installed.
>

--
Sent from my phone via Android email client K-9.
Please, forgive my brevity.

[Klaus Lichtenwalder]

Definitely. And trying to bump this topic ... If there's already been something I missed, please push me in the right direction... I've just been in France, and my native language is German. As you said, this may sometimes be funny, but it's also difficult to get the meaning (you're looking on the display to try to figure out what was really meant), and you try to keep the windows shut for not being too embarrassed should somebody overhear that... ;-)

Klaus

[Χάρης Καραχριστιανίδης]

This would be very useful!

[Peter B]

+1 !
Peter

[sympa]

I think announcing the street name is often overrated. Many times it is not easy to see which street is where.

Perhaps an alternative could be 'the main street' or 'the street with the tram tracks' or 'towards the bridge'. But I do not know how hard that kind of map interpretation is, but it might be more helpful than teh street name.

I also find Google Maps very annoying by the way, reading out the complete signs above the highway. and it has the same problem.

[Klaus Lichtenwalder]

Well, yes and no... It might be confusing, at times, but navigating in a town helps keeping your eyes on the street, not on the display ;-) At least we thought so this holidays...

But you're right, this might also be a personal oppinion. IIRC, you can switch off announcing the street names? Or do I mix it up?

This other feature might indeed be too complicated, or depending very much on volunteers marking the streets as such...

[Peter Kaiser]

To jump on this topic again... I'd love to have this feature: directions always in one language but with local names pronounced in the local language wherever we are.

Perhaps our situation is unusual. My wife and I share several languages but prefer directions in English or German; however, we also travel in several other language regions, and the mispronunciations of local names are often ridiculous, difficult or even misleading. We find spoken directions useful when we're driving with eyes on the traffic (call me old-fashioned), but I'd like to be able to choose to have local names pronounced locally. For us it's less confusing and more helpful.

[Aceman444]

Is this even possible with any TTS engine? In the ones I saw, e.g. Google's TTS that is on most devices, you select one language and the TTS engine speaks any text it receives in that single language.
You need to select TTS file in OsmAnd for that specific language. If you choose other, the pronounciation will be funny (what the report here is about).
But is there any technical possibility to switch the language of the TTS engine (not OsmAnd) on the fly for each language?

Dňa nedeľa, 14. januára 2018 12:27:22 UTC+1 Peter Kaiser napísal(-a):

[jonathon]

On 01/16/2018 09:51 PM, Aceman444 wrote:

> But is there any technical possibility to switch the language of the TTS engine (not OsmAnd) on the fly for each language?

This depends upon how the TTS learned to pronounce words.

If the TTS uses an intelligent rule set, then the primary issue is
writing the place name in the appropriate writing system.

That said, there are always going to be place names that the TTS will
get wrong. (TTS virtually always mispronounce clicks.)

jonathon

[Majka]

On 01/16/2018 09:51 PM, Aceman444 wrote:

> But is there any technical possibility to switch the language of the TTS engine (not OsmAnd) on the fly for each language?

It is possible.

You don't need to have a "smart" TTS, you can do the split outside of it. The used TTS engine does not have to be actually set as active in system, it is an application as any other.
How to do it:
First, you need to get the preferred tts engine for each language from the list of the installed ones - you simply set two instead of one in preferences, or in my case up to six - in a list for future use.
For the speech part, you simply get the language for it and send each sentence (or part of it) to the TTS for the correct language, waiting for the first part to be finished before starting the new one.

I used it myself with tasker, switching on the fly. Even with my old phone, there wasn't any additional pause to hear due to the switch. What was annoying was that each part was seen as a finished sentence and pronounced accordingly.

The same should be possible with Osmand, but has to be coded.
Not sure, if there is really so much interest in it to get it on the map. It would complicate the relatively simple tts part of Osmand.

[Toby Dickenson]

There is an open issue for this in osmand
https://github.com/osmandapp/Osmand/issues/4190

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