VoiceBook

[goulniky]

I was in China last week and a Chinese friend showed me an interesting application on his smartphone called VoiceBook, which reads a Chinese text file aloud.
But according to the company website, it seems to only be available on PocketPC and Windows Mobile.
Not surprisingly, Palm is not supported, but does any one know of a similar desktop tool for Windows XP? [/url]

 

[chao-ren]

... reads a Chinese text file aloud..........does any one know of a similar desktop tool for Windows XP?

NJStar Chinese Wordprocessor professional version 5.1 OR
NJStar Chinese Pen 2.10 which reads a written word or a highlighted paragraph in male/female voice.http://www.njstar.com/

What is interesting about iflytek.com is that they do Cantonese as well !!!
wow! :lol:
You'll never need to learn cantonese in hk as you just high light the chinese text and play it back to the taxi driver :wink:

 

[goulniky]

I bought NJStar Pro over a year ago, never noticed that functionality, will go check. But VoiceBook on the go is really cool, I asked them they only support MS mobile OS.

I am in the unfortunate situation to have a Blackberry from my company, but as soon as I can get rid of it I'll go buy one of these QTEK smarphones with keyboard and swivel screen to replace my UX50. Still pricey though.

 

[goulniky]

Just tested the read-aloud feature of NJStar Chinese 5.1 Pro and I'm not impressed. Just tried it on a few paragraphs but it didn't compare favourably with VoiceBook, very mechanical.

 

[chao-ren]

I wonder if the Voicebook can be installed under English Windows Mobile OS or like most "made in china" software, they haven't decided to use Unicode yet even for the chinese menus and you'll need some viewer to see GBcode or use the Chinese Windows Mobile OS.

Definitely an interesting product especially if they can make the menus interchanggeable: Chinese or English - Include Cantonese for the Hong Kong market option.

 

[goulniky]

ask them

Why don't you ask them? They're very responsive.
I sent them an email in English (can't do hanzi on my bberry) and they replied, actually 2 separate answers in English within 24 hours. Check email link on their website (voicebook@iflytek.com) and let us know, I'd be really interested.

 

[goulniky]

I wonder if the Voicebook can be installed under English Windows Mobile OS or like most "made in china" software, they haven't decided to use Unicode yet even for the chinese menus and you'll need some viewer to see GBcode or use the Chinese Windows Mobile OS.

The answer is yes, menus can be switched to English, but they do come in Chinese by default. See details

 

[chao-ren]

goulniky,
VoiceBook as far as I have found out so far is NOT really meant for the overseas market. By that I mean the current version V2.0 and the previous 1.0 are only meant for China, mainly, and then Taiwan (and maybe to a limited extent Hong Kong). The fact that they are not interested or cannot in the near future produce a Cantonese version means that Hong Kong is not really a market either. In Hong Kong the previous 1.1 version sold for only HK$99 dollars, a bit less than US$14 dollars.(cheap enough) But I can't really see any real market or people using it in Hong Kong to read Chinese passages even if the price came down some more because as you know they use Cantonese to read instead!

If you have an ear to the management or the actual 領導人 as they often say here you should perhaps enquire as to why not design a version for the overseas market? Design a version for people who want to listen to Mandarin with the ulterior motive of learning the language as well. Put in a sound recorder so that people can carry their own home made PODCASTs in their ipods or MP3/WMA format. Carry your lessons everywhere and listen to Mandarin any time you want etc.. etc...

Before they decide to make a version specifically for the overseas market, I would be hesistant about asking people to try it and install it etc... This is my opinion. I did go to their website and try to write some emails to the then 負責人 of VoiceBook, only to discover that his understanding of what the software should entail or eventually do is quite different from what I would imagine a "foreigner" would do with eReaders.

He was actually trying to get me to help sell his product, only to discover after much conversation that he didn't even know the exchange rate for HK$ to the USD$!!!!! I told him that if he could just produce a UNICODE menu I would even help write the user manual for his product free of charge. I said the first step was to get his product "internationalised" before talking about margins and how much you should sell it for in each market and who should represent you etc..

Can you imagine the boss of PlecoDict (Mark) telling you: " Well, I can't tell you what the next version of PlecoDict is going to include nor discuss too much about Flashcards repetition cos......this might dilute my trade mark , hmmm...hmmm.. you understand? " …….. "Now why the sudden lost of interest in Pleco". "Its cheap enough isn’t?" "You disagree about the price?" "No?" “I want to thank you for your interest in our product….”

I say to myself, well at least here is one product which will NOT be making its mark on the world stage in the very soon. Besides competition like Microsoft which distributes its e-readers free!!! and there is actually a real excuse for English speakers to use e-Readers because of e-books and there isn't for Chinese readers with no Chinese e-books published as yet. I am sure this In-charge person, if he still has a brain, have not compared his product with Microsoft's or even considered whether he might have similar "market-cycle" with Chinese publishers paying for the cost of VoiceBook's future development.

oh what a laugh!! :lol:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all readers!

 

[goulniky]

Well, you're probably be right about the market, I don't really know their approach, but I don't have a grudge against them.
I don't have the ear of their management either, I simply got a very quick reply both times I asked them a specific question, so I figured this is good customer support.
I don't know what Microsoft product you have in mind, I wasn't aware of any product that could do this, I'd be interested to know more if there were alternatives to reading Chinese text aloud here, not any other language.
I think voice recording / podcasting functions are something else, my interest in the product is simply running a piece of text, as little as a paragraph, any blog or web post, and have it spoken with reasonable fluency, have it repeated at various speeds or with various voices. That clearly is a language learner's perspective, different from a native speaker who may just have a book or some such read aloud on the go.
So it's true that a lot of the products on the Chinese market are aimed at a Chinese audience, domestic and 华侨, but this will undoubtedly change, see the success of ChinesePod and other podcasters, the growing interest in Chinese language education, I hope this translates into sales for the likes of Pleco (not that I'm aware of any direct competitor though ;-) )