Quote:
Originally Posted by Scruffydog777
I'm in Nice... It's my first of 3 days here...
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You lucky (Scruffy)dog!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scruffydog777
One thing I've noticed over the years in my travel to France is, you can be asking someone in France about a multi sylable word and be one octave off in one sylable of your pronunciation, and it's like you're speaking gibberish to them. They can't relate the very close pronunciation to the exact pronunciation ( Sorry Bigdan and Corsaire, but that's the way it's always seemed to me.).
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Happily, we now live in a NEW age! Last quarter was the first time global shipments of smart phones exceeded that of PCs - over 100 million units. Perhaps Scruffy has such a gadget with him now?
I used
Google translate to translate AND PRONOUNCE in French the English phrase
Are you familiar with the singer Alizée?
which is
Êtes-vous familier avec la chanteuse Alizée?
I captured the audio with Scruffy's old friend,
Audacity, and uploaded it as an MP3 file
here.
Google translate uses a high-end synthesizer for English, but, to date, cuts corners with the other languages it supports. (I wish Google made a simple change and supported speech synthesis at various word speeds, to help people learn a new language.) I wonder what Bigdan thinks about the job it does with French. Long ago, I have listened to both American English and British English synthesizers, so one might also develop engines for various French dialects.
And you should know there are multiple firms working on speech-to-speech translation as well. I think you can find a
YouTube video of a German guy at a Microsoft show in China doing such a demo. (But sadly, sometimes talking computers have a bit of trouble with their
knowledge of geography, LOL!)
I hope Scruffy can download and play the audio clip I created for his two young
Provençals and let us know what they think!
And remember, with a cellphone and Web access, one could create other phrases as needed!