I haven't had any use for it yet (and I'm still looking for what I can do with it), but I recently came across a site Text2Voice, a pretty cool site that lets you read aloud any text you submit to it!
Totally free, This site therefore allows you to read texts in 30 different languages and more than 10 regional accents (e.g. Quebecois). This site uses the machine learning algorithm on different voice samples in order to reproduce your text as naturally as possible.
The algorithm is optimized to read sentences in one go and it is therefore important to punctuate your text well (periods, commas, etc.) in order to make reading even more “human”.
To use it, simply enter your text in the dedicated field (limited to 1000 characters) and then select the language you are interested in from the 30 available. For most languages, you will have the choice between several voices in order to select the one that best suits what you want to do. For French, for example, you can choose the cold voice of Céline, the warmer voice of Léa or the deep voice of Mathieu.
You can then adjust some settings by choosing the reading speed, adding breaths, a soft or whispered voice, etc.
Once satisfied, you can export and download your recording in MP3 or OGG by setting a sampling quality from 8000 to 24000Hz.
Of course, the result doesn't look perfectly natural, but the tool is still quite effective...
Finally, if you want to have a little fun, you can have a text written in French read by a Hindi, Romanian or other voice to get an idea of the accent of foreigners who speak our language! But ultimately, the funniest thing is to have a text read in English by a French voice… I'm sure it will make you think of the crappy accent of someone around you (or maybe even your own)!
Here is an example of what it can look like:
With its version read by a Brazilian ;)… Samba!
Text2Voice
