I'm looking for a software that can read different languages in the same text. I would prefer a software for ubuntu, but I can accept to use wine.
The document in question has a series of sentences in English + the Spanish equivalent. My idea was to create a MP3 file of the recording of these sentences, so that I could listen it to practice my pronunciation.
Suggestions on how I can carry out this project are welcome!
Google Translator can read different languages very good. Just click the listen button.
Now, there is a simple small utility that can record to mp3 anything which plays through your speakers, and therefore from your web browser, called Audio Recorder:
To install it from terminal, run the following commands:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:osmoma/audio-recorder
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install audio-recorder
Source: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/audio-recorder-for-linux-easily-record-audio-streams-to-mp3
If you're comfortable with the command line, then Festival which you can install from Ubuntu Software Centre is a speech synthesis system. You will also need to install a Spanish voice (sudo apt-get install festvox-ellpc11k). Once there, you can have Festival read text like this:
echo "Hi there" | festival --tts
echo "Buenos dias" | festival --tts --language spanish
You may also want to investigate the text2wave command, installed with Festival, which saves the spoken words as a WAV file rather than speaking them directly; you can then use that WAV file for practice, or convert it to an MP3 if you prefer (using a tool such as lame.)
As mentioned here gTTS does exactly that on CLI:
sudo -H pip install gTTS # Install
Usage
gtts-cli 'hello' --output hello.mp3
gtts-cli --slow "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" | play -t mp3 -
gtts-cli -l es "Seamos realistas y hagamos lo imposible" | play -t mp3 -
gtts-cli -l fr 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité' | play -t mp3 -
Google undocumented API doesn't seem to offer different voices.
