Azure Neural Text-to-Speech updates: 51 new voices added to the portfolio
Published Dec 15 2020 04:17 AM 19.9K Views
Microsoft

This post was co-authored with Qinying Liao, Sheng Zhao, Gang Wang, Yueying Liu

 

Neural Text to Speech (Neural TTS), a powerful speech synthesis capability of Cognitive Services on Azure, enables you to convert text to lifelike speech which is close to human-parity.  Since its launch, we have seen it widely adopted in a variety of scenarios by many Azure customers, from voice assistants to audio content creation. More and more customers are asking for richer and more diverse choices of synthetic voices for different use cases.

 

Today, we are excited to announce that Azure Neural TTS has added 51 new voices for a total of 129 neural voices across 54 languages/locales. With this release, we provide at least one male and one female voice for customers to choose in each language/locale.  In total, Azure TTS now enables developers to reach millions more people with more than 200 voices available in standard and neural TTS.

 

What's new

 

Neural TTS has now been extended to support 51 new voices, which will bring to you the capability to have both male and female voices in each language for your apps. You can hear samples of the voices below, or try them with your own text in our demo.

 

46 new voices are generally available

 

In total 46 new voices are released across the 49 locales that are generally available in the Azure data centers/regions that support neural TTS (see the full list of Azure regions here).

 

Locale

Language 

Gender

Voice

Sample audio

ar-EG

Arabic (Egypt)

Male

ShakirNeural

البركان هو أكثر ما في الطبيعــة إثارة للرهبة

ar-SA

Arabic (Saudi Arabia)

Male

HamedNeural

الناس مَعادن، تصدأ بالملل، وتتمدد بالأمل، وتنكمش بالألم

bg-BG

Bulgarian (Bulgaria)

Male

BorislavNeural

Шофьорът задължително трябва да вземе експерт за второ мнение, за да провери дали всички системи на автомобила работят нормално.

ca-ES

Catalan (Spain)

Male

EnricNeural

Les activitats docents tenen lloc al campus del Poblenou.

ca-ES

Catalan (Spain)

Female

JoanaNeural

L'artista està considerat com el pintor de les multituds.

cs-CZ

Czech (Czech)

Male

AntoninNeural

Opravdový zasvěcenec ví, že nejmocnějším tajemstvím je to, které nemá žádný obsah.

da-DK

Danish (Denmark)

Male

JeppeNeural

61 procent af de kandidatstuderende er kvinder.

de-AT

German (Austria)

Male

JonasNeural

Das ist das letzte lange Pfingstwochenende für Schülerinnen und Schüler.

de-CH

German (Switzerland)

Male

JanNeural

Eine Person, die sich bei Brandausbruch im oberen Stock aufgehalten hat, hat sich noch rechtzeitig in Sicherheit bringen können.

el-GR

Greek (Greece)

Male

NestorasNeural

Συγκλονιστικές εξελίξεις και ανατροπές στα επόμενα επεισόδια .

en-CA

English (Canada)

Male

LiamNeural

He had held the position since 2010.

en-IE

English (Ireland)

Male

ConnorNeural

Life is short, think before you talk.

en-IN

English (India)

Male

PrabhatNeural

Sometimes you can see snow on the mountains.

fi-FI

Finnish (Finland)

Male

HarriNeural

Yhtiö kertoi loppuvuoden tuloksestaan ennakkotietoja.

fi-FI

Finnish (Finland)

Female

SelmaNeural

Hevoset ovat uljaita ja nopeita eläimiä.

fr-CH

French (Switzerland)

Male

FabriceNeural

La Suisse comptera 5,6 millions (12%) de personnes actives en 2050.

he-IL

Hebrew (Israel)

Male

AvriNeural

הוא אמר שהמספרים מדאיגים בשל עצמם, אבל בכל הישיבות שלנו המסקנה היא שזה סימפטום למשהו רחב יותר.

hi-IN

Hindi (India)

Male

MadhurNeural

सिद्धार्थ ने भी शहनाज के साथ इस इवेंट की फोटो शेयर की है।

hr-HR

Croatian (Croatia)

Male

SreckoNeural

Video je pregledan gotovo 70 tisuća puta, a neki od obožavatelja su mu u komentarima pisali kako ih je motivirao.

hu-HU

Hungarian (Hungary)

Male

TamasNeural

A lakóhelyem nagyon komfortos.

id-ID

Indonesian (Indonesia)

Female

GadisNeural

Inflasi ringan terjadi apabila kenaikan harga berada di bawah angka 10% setahun.

ms-MY

Malay (Malaysia)

Male

OsmanNeural

Setiap individu perlu memakai topeng muka ketika berada di luar.

nb-NO

Norwegian (Bokmål, Norway)

Male

FinnNeural

Jansson forteller at den svenske øya tar imot rundt 8000 besøkende fra Norge årlig.

nb-NO

Norwegian (Bokmål, Norway)

Female

PernilleNeural

For en fantastisk forestilling!

nl-NL

Dutch (Netherlands)

Female

FennaNeural

De afstand tussen Rotterdam en Breda is ongeveer 45 km.

nl-NL

Dutch (Netherlands)

Male

MaartenNeural

Zij heeft haar studie al een tijdje geleden afgerond.

pl-PL

Polish (Poland)

Female

AgnieszkaNeural

To już nie będzie to samo, będzie drożej.

pl-PL

Polish (Poland)

Male

MarekNeural

Na wszelki wypadek sprawdź, czy coś cię jednak nie zaskoczy.

pt-PT

Portuguese (Portugal)

Male

DuarteNeural

Para a aprovação do exame, tenho de ter pelo menos 80% das respostas corretas.

pt-PT

Portuguese (Portugal)

Female

RaquelNeural

A minha mãe ensinou-me que devo ter respeito por todos, mas principalmente pelos mais velhos.

ro-RO

Romanian (Romania)

Male

EmilNeural

Actul normativ se axează pe instituirea de măsuri active, 41,5 % din salariul de bază la revenirea din șomaj tehnic.

ru-RU

Russian (Russia)

Male

DmitryNeural

Ранее посольство требовало от агентства опровержения статьи о количестве больничных коек в России.

ru-RU

Russian (Russia)

Female

SvetlanaNeural

Изменений в организме людей, попробовавших еду без приправ, не произошло.

sk-SK

Slovak (Slovakia)

Male

LukasNeural

Zápis 45 % je v skutočnosti iba skratka pre zlomok.

sl-SI

Slovenian (Slovenia)

Male

RokNeural

Zloraba bonov in dvigovanje cen turističnih storitev je nesprejemljivo ravnanje.

sv-SE

Swedish (Sweden)

Male

MattiasNeural

Båda lagen bjöd på riktigt bra hockey och skapade flera riktigt bra målchanser.

sv-SE

Swedish (Sweden)

Female

SofieNeural

Det fanns ingen trafik runt torget.

ta-IN

Tamil (India)

Male

ValluvarNeural

எவ்வளவு அருமையான பாடல் அது!

te-IN

Telugu (India)

Male

MohanNeural

అబ్బ, ఎంత పెద్ద భవనమో!

th-TH

Thai (Thailand)

Male

NiwatNeural

ธุรกิจขายอาหารเป็นธุรกิจที่ได้รับความนิยมมากที่สุด

tr-TR

Turkish (Turkey)

Male

AhmetNeural

Sosyal mesafeye büyük ölçüde riayet eden çocuklar, başta mahalle parkları olmak üzere sahiller ve oyun parklarında enerji attı.

vi-VN

Vietnamese (Vietnam)

Male

NamMinhNeural

Nhiệt độ hiện tại ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh là 38 độ C.

zh-HK

Chinese (Cantonese, Traditional)

Female

HiuMaanNeural

抗疫舉措成為安全重啟經濟的重要一環。

zh-HK

Chinese (Cantonese, Traditional)

Male

WanLungNeural

隨着疫情緩和,愈來愈多人回到辦公室上班,但是很多人仍想留在家中工作(work from home)。

zh-TW

Chinese (Taiwanese Mandarin)

Female

HsiaoChenNeural

賭博的勝率應該不到50%。

zh-TW

Chinese (Taiwanese Mandarin)

Male

YunJheNeural

台北車站大廳能不能坐,連日引發正反意見。

 

 

5 new voices are in public preview

 

We have also added 5 male voices in the 5 low-resource languages that have been supported since November. These voices are available in public preview in three Azure regions: EastUS, SouthEastAsia and WestEurope.

 

Hear the samples below:

Locale

Language

Gender

Voice Name

Sample audio

et-EE

Estonian (Estonia)

Male

KertNeural

Ametlikku meetodit sellise pettuse avastamiseks ei olegi olemas.

ga-IE

Irish (Ireland)

Male

ColmNeural

Ritheadh próiseas comhairliúcháin faoin scéal sa bhfómhar.

lt-LT

Lithuanian (Lithuania)

Male

LeonasNeural

Aišku, anksčiau ar vėliau paaiškės tos priežastys.

lv-LV

Latvian (Latvia)

Male

NilsNeural

Aizvadīto gadu uzņēmums noslēdzis ar 6,3 miljonu eiro zaudējumiem.

mt-MT

Maltese (Malta)

Male

JosephNeural

Anki tfajjel tal-primarja jaf li l-popolazzjoni tikber fejn hemm il-prosperità.

 

With this release, we now support a total of 129 neural voices across 54 languages/locales. In addition, over 70 standard voices are available in 49 languages/locales. Visit Language support - Speech service - Azure Cognitive Services | Microsoft Docs for the full language and voice list.

 

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Continuous voice quality improvement

 

In general, Neural TTS can convert text to lifelike speech, however there are nuances that can always be improved. For example, we have customers who have requested the ability to support a scenario where Katja, our de-DE neural voice, can pronounce English words in the context of a German sentence. This was valuable feedback, and we anticipate a similar need across languages.

 

For German, we observed that our users prefer the voice to handle an English word/phrase as close as the native English pronunciation. To enable a voice model to speak English as a second language, it is normally required that we collect the speech data of the same speaker speaking English besides his/her native language. This is a big challenge as we do not have sufficient multi-language speech data from our German voice talents. By leveraging cross-lingual capability of UNI-TTS, we are able to generate more English pronunciation data with the transferred voice from our German voice talent. Such data is used to improve the quality of the English word/phrase pronunciations for the German Katja voice, so Katja can pronounce English words in a more natural way.

 

The CMOS metric is used to measure the improvement of the English word pronunciation for Katja. 

This improvement has now been released to the Azure Neural TTS service for Katja. Moving forward, we’ll extend this capability to support more languages.

 

Tell us your experience!

 

By offering more voices across more languages and locales, we anticipate developers across the world will be able to build applications that change experiences for millions. Whether you’re building a voice-enabled chatbot or IoT device, an IVR solution, adding read-aloud features to your app, converting e-books to audio books, or even adding Speech to a translation app, you can make all these experiences natural sounding and fun with Neural TTS.

 

Let us know how you are using or plan to use Neural TTS voices in this form. If you prefer, you can also contact us at mstts [at] microsoft.com. We look forward to hearing your experience and developing more compelling services together with you for the developers around the world.

 

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