Voices en Español

Have you ever read or seen something in Spanish, tried to say it out loud and then wondered if your pronunciation was correct? Although the rules of Spanish phonetics are straightforward there are still times when it is useful to hear a native speaker’s pronunciation.

Here’s a suggestion: Use speech synthesizer software to check the sounds of Spanish words and sentences. Just type in the line of text you wish to have read, select a voice from the menu of voices and click “play.”  You’ll then hear a synthesized voice reading your text. While the voices don’t sound 100% natural, they’re pretty darn close. In fact, these kinds of synthesized voices have gotten remarkably better in recent years and are sounding less robotic.

AT&T Labs only has two “Latin American” Spanish voices available — one male, one female. Copy and paste the Spanish text that you wish to have read aloud by “Rosa” or “Alberto.” The AT&T site is for demonstration purposes only and there is a 300-character maximum. Also, there is a limit on daily submissions made by the same Internet Provider address, although AT&T doesn’t specify what that number is.

Loquendo also has an interactive demo where you can put in short blocks of text. The good thing about Loquendo is that it has a wide range of male and female voices from Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Spain and the quality of the synthesized voices is surprisingly good.

SodelsCot has voices from Spain and its software can be downloaded for a 7-day trial. After that, you have to pay for it. There’s a standard version available for 32 euros.

To be sure, the companies that make this speech synthesizer technology are targeting corporations which need to generate audio recordings for their call centers, products or voicemail systems, not individuals. So there will be a limit to how much text you can put in the demostration models of the software that are available to use at no cost. But if you need a tool you can quickly access to double check the pronunciation of Spanish words or phrases, the interactive demo of these services, particularly the Loquendo product, are worth a look.