Multilingualism: Applying Speech Expertise to Bilingual Text to Speech Voices, by Acapela Group

MONS, Belgium, April 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Did you know that in the world today multilingual speakers outnumber those only speaking one language?* And due to the Internet and the easy access to content in any language this trend is becoming even more pronounced. At Acapela, we are actively working on meeting the needs of multilingual people, languages and voices are part of our DNA.

What is Multilingualism?

It's the use of multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers.

Multilingualism sometimes leads to a blend of languages. Spanglish, for example, isn't a language as such but a combination of English and Spanish. It's used by Hispanic Americans to speak to other Hispanic Americans who understand both Spanish and English, share parts of the U.S. and Latin American cultures, prefer speaking both languages instead of one, and interchange languages when they feel like it.

At Acapela, our core expertise with languages and voices puts us in the frontline. We meet the demands of multilingual speakers from around the world and work on any language or voice required.

Meet Rod - Rodrigo

Our latest bilingual voice - we call him Rod or Rodrigo depending on the language he's speaking - just joined the Acapela family. The voice was recorded recently to answer the demand from the Spanish community in North America for a Spanish North American voice.

As usual we organized a voice casting to select the right speaker, someone who meets our high quality requirements for text to speech purposes. And we met the ideal candidate, a fully bilingual professional speaker who perfectly performs both Spanish North American & English North American.

First selected for the Spanish North American voice, he appeared to be an excellent speaker in American English too. So we decided to take advantage of this great skill to provide both North American Spanish and American English languages using the same voice. So this talented bilingual speaker has recently recorded hours of speech in two separate sessions, under the direction of the Acapela team. And it turned out brilliantly! Another great experience and challenge for our R&D team.

"Languages, our specialist field, are an amazing source of creation and innovation. Our linguistic knowledge has already helped create a great Arabic-English bilingual voice which has had wonderful feedback from users. Our unique voice repertoire, containing a myriad of accents, dialects and languages, testifies to our know-how and leadership in voice creation," comments Lars-Erik Larsson, CEO of Acapela Group, "and Rod/Rodrigo will now watch over young Valeria & Emilio, the World's First genuine children's bilingual voices. We are very proud of them."

Hear Rod/Rodrigo voice samples: https://soundcloud.com/acapelagroup/sets/bilingual-voices

Some examples of Spanglish

"Chequear" for "to check" is standard throughout the United States, Puerto Rico and Latin America. "Parquear" for "to park" is clearly Spanglish, it
has only recently come into use, as has "Textear" meaning "to text".

About Acapela group:

We invent speech solutions to vocalize any written content with authentic and original voices that express meaning and intent. Over 100 synthetic voices in 30 languages are ready to give a voice to any content producing a natural and pleasant audio result, by turning written input into speech. We can create the voice your company needs. Just for you. This is Acapela bespoke expertise. Let's talk! http://www.acapela-group.com

*according to a Global Perspective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education (1999), G.Richard Tucker, Carnegie Mellon University 

SOURCE Acapela Group