Why not adopt translation tool into the TTS reading of Edge?

Brass Contributor

Microsoft TTS (text to speech) is the best on the planet, but why not apply the google or baidu translation tool into the TTS reading which make users reading article in foreign languages as quickly as native speakers. The following is a article I want to read via Edge TTS reading.

屏幕截图.jpg

I design a bilingual mode of the Edge TTS reading:

搜狗截图20201206145639.png

As you can see, the green line is the sentence in reading, the golden word in bold is the word reading now. The translation of the word reading now is on the top of this word in orange. And red line is the translation of the whole sentence.(All the article have been translated already and the TTS reading tool is just to match the reading sentence.) All the font, size, color of the filling and word; animation and sound effects of appearance, emphasis, and exit could all be DIY by the user himself!

That will make users can read an article in a foreign language like the native speakers!

16 Replies

Hi,

Edge can read aloud Chinese text in Chinese accent and language, English text in English accent and language and so on.

 

dsds.png

 

so where is the problem exactly?

 

Another thing, (using translation + Read aloud together)

I can go here:

https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/12/03/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-202...

 

translate the whole page to Chinese simplified first, and then go to ellipsis menu (...) and select Read Aloud to read the entire page for me. Edge will automatically use a natural Chinese voice to read it. again no problem. it uses native Chinese natural voice.

 

dsdada.png

 

 

also take a look at this:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/download-voices-for-immersive-reader-read-mode-and-read-a...

 

 

 

@HotCakeX Thank you for your reply! But that is not what I mean. If I wanna see something in language that I have zero knowledge about, I have bunches of extensions to use like these ones:

划词翻译 - Chrome 网上应用店 (google.com)

百度翻译:网页翻译、海淘神器 - Chrome 网上应用店 (google.com)

I just mean that if someone who want to read a foreign article with its original reading while he was not that familiar with the language, or someone who are learning a target language and try to read something in that language with the assistance of the Edge TTS reading. The Edge TTS reading will help a lot if it add this translation function! 

For instance, now a Persian speaker trying to learn German with the assist of Edge TTS. If you add the translation of each word and sentence. It did help a lot and could accelerate your language learning!

翻译.png

 

@GatesLover 

"If you add the translation of each word and sentence. It did help a lot and could accelerate your language learning!"

 

Well you can do that too, highlight a text (word or sentence), right-click and select read aloud, or translate.

 

BeforeBefore

 

 

in-line text translation + read aloudin-line text translation + read aloud

 

 

AfterAfter

 

@HotCakeX What if I just want to read the complete article the same speed as the native speakers? If you click each sentence to read and translate, it's a waste of time! TTS‘s major functions lying in reading an article in a foreign language. Not much people use it to read article in their native speech. Some old generations of ethnic minorities like Uyghur and Tibetan are not used to read a long article in Chinese, but they just want to read the original article with a little assistance of translation. If the have to read the whole passage all by click of mouse, it will be a little boring. And farther more, many extension have already reach this goal of sentence translation and reading like this:

划词翻译 - Chrome 网上应用店 (google.com)

 

Well then it's not clear what you want.
Edge has full page TTS and translation, but you said:
"If you add the translation of each word and sentence‎. It did help a lot and could accelerate your language learning!"

then I said okay Edge has that too, and now you say translating each word and sentence takes time!

so what do you want exactly?!

also the comments you make are in Chinese, right? the forum automatically translates them into English. so some meanings could get lost there in between

@HotCakeX Well you might be an English speaker, and not understand the situation of the majority bilingual workers all over the world. If you come to some college who were not born and raised in US, he will instantly understand we I mean. Assuming that an American work for a Brazilian customer. He have the basic knowledge of Portuagy but not know everything. And he just want to read the original contract in Portualgy with the assistance of translation but not reading the total translation of in English. Another situation, if your kid are learning German, she doesn't understand everything in German, but she want to read a German novel, TTS with the help of sentence/word translation extension will perfectly solve this problem!

@GatesLover 

I know more than 1 languages but the point of the topic is to make a clear suggestion to be implemented by Edge developers if they find it useful.

I'm trying to help you with that but so far, all I see is "assistance from translation or TTS". it's not clear what it means exactly. 

  1. without including unnecessary details, try to make a clear example of the problem you are describing, with steps to reproduce it, (1-2-3 ..etc.). video and picture could be useful too.
  2. Talk about how to fix it and what you propose.
  3. lastly, mention the reason(s) and why you think this is a problem.

 

@HotCakeX Can you understand the picture below? It is when you press Ctrl Shift U to open up the TTS reading mode! The sentence in green is the sentence being read now! The golden word "funneling" in bold is the word being read now. And sentence roll when reading go on which cannot be demonstrated by a picture, understand?

搜狗截图20201206145639.png

Now could you please add several additional layers:

① The layer of the sentence being read now;(green line in the picture above)

② The layer of the word being read now; (gold word "funneling" in bold in the picture above)

③ The layer of the translation of the word being read now; (The word in orange above the "funneling" in the picture above)

④ The layer of the translation of the sentence being read now; (The red line in the picture above)

⑤ The layer of the Romanization of the sentence being read now(This was not demonstrated in this picture above; This layer is majorly target for those western people who want to read an article in a language that didn't adopted a Latin alphabet such as Chinese, Japanese, Uyghur, Tibetan, traditional Mongolian script etc.)

Make sure that all these 5 five layer's font, filling color, size, text box position, paragraph format, animation, sound effect could be DIY by users themselves

 

What is this function useful?

When you want to listen a book or News in a foreign language while you don't have fully understanding of that target language

 

How to realize this function?

Import translation to the sentence and word being read now

 

 

Thank you,

Alright so number 1 and 2 are already in Edge,
3, 4 and 5 are not.

so let me see if I understood correctly, please correct if I got it wrong.

Here are the steps you like to take, when translating and reading for example Spanish, while your native language is Chinese.

1. translate the entire page from Spanish => Chinese, by right-clicking on the page and select "Translate this page to Chinese".

2. you start Read Aloud or TTS in Edge, either from menu (...) or Ctrl + Shift + U

3. Edge starts reading the Chinese text for you, in Chinese native and natural voice that is inside Edge.

4. (not yet implemented) now when a Chinese sentence is being read by Edge, you want to see the original version of that sentence (Spanish) at the top of it, maybe whenever you hover over that sentence with your mouse cursor or finger touch.

5. (not yet implemented) so now you see 2 horizontal rows (Chinese and Spanish). and when Edge TTS is reading a certain word in Chinese, and highlights it with a different color, you want the same word in the original Spanish sentence to be highlighted as well, to see exactly which word is translated.

6. (not yet implemented) Romanization of the sentence: so, for example, Hello in Russian is "Привет" but an English speaker might not be familiar with Russian (Cyrillic) alphabets, so Edge will show "Priviet" (the actual pronunciation of Привет). this extra piece of information can appear when you hover over the word that is being read at the moment, with mouse cursor or finger touch. it's going to be a in a 3rd row.


@HotCakeX I think you didn't get my point! I just want to read the original article, and the auto-translation layers merely play as an assistance! If I want to translate the whole page I have many other tools!

1.layer ①&② are already there but users can't set up the filling color, the font and color of the word, or whether it was in bold;

2.Users just set up their native language in advance. And once he press Ctrl Shift U to read an article in a foreign language, the TTS reader just began to read in that language and open up the translation assistance automatically. And if he order to read an article in his native language, the translation assistance won't show up!

3.Don't translate the entire page!!! I just want to see the whole page exactly the same as the native speakers, only with the translation assistance! 

4.As for Romanization I once designed a model for English speakers who are learning Chinese:

学汉.png学汉2.png

@HotCakeX The 5 layers of the translation assistance only appear in the sentence being read now. And all other parts of the page are totally the same as the native speakers using TTS read the article!

@GatesLover 

 

Spoiler

@GatesLover wrote:

@HotCakeX I think you didn't get my point! I just want to read the original article, and the auto-translation layers merely play as an assistance! If I want to translate the whole page I have many other tools!

1.layer ①&② are already there but users can't set up the filling color, the font and color of the word, or whether it was in bold;

2.Users just set up their native language in advance. And once he press Ctrl Shift U to read an article in a foreign language, the TTS reader just began to read in that language and open up the translation assistance automatically. And if he order to read an article in his native language, the translation assistance won't show up!

3.Don't translate the entire page!!! I just want to see the whole page exactly the same as the native speakers, only with the translation assistance! 

4.As for Romanization I once designed a model for English speakers who are learning Chinese:

学汉.png学汉2.png


Yeah, I know what Romanization means. my example with Russian word Hello is correct, it's talking about the same thing.

 

 

again, you're using "translation assistance" which is vague and not correctly defined. 

 

Ctrl + shift + u works for entire page, that's the shortcut for it. the term that needs to be used here is "Read Aloud", which works for a selected text as well.

 

in my previous comment, I went into details of exactly how it can be implemented, those features could actually help me too If i wanted to learn another language.

I never used "translation assistance" because there is no such thing. it's just confusing and nobody will understand what you want exactly. you need to be more detailed, about each component and feature, maybe in the end, once everything is implemented, you can call them as a whole "translation assistance", but at the moment that phrase has no meaning in Edge.

 

"2.Users just set up their native language in advance. And once he press Ctrl Shift U to read an article in a foreign language, the TTS reader just began to read in that language and"

 

you can set your native language in Edge settings edge://settings/languages

Edge will offer translation based on your preference in there.

Edge will still read pages in foreign language.

my Edge is set to English but if i visit pages that have Russian texts, Read Aloud will read it to me, in Russian native voice, without translating to English.

 

@HotCakeXMaybe your understanding could be another mode! I call it translation comparation mode

① Split the passage into sentence "." "!" "?"

② Each sentence might have a translation layer or a Romanization layer

③ Each have a trumpet icon, and if you click the icon, Edge will read the sentence.(I was inspired by the Longman dictionary reading)

GatesLover_0-1607345602918.png

Here is a model paragragh:

GatesLover_2-1607347813378.png

The  following is the translation comparation mode

GatesLover_1-1607347751880.png

Click the icon and you will here the TTS audio of that sentence

 

@GatesLover 


@GatesLover wrote:

@HotCakeX The 5 layers of the translation assistance only appear in the sentence being read now. And all other parts of the page are totally the same as the native speakers using TTS read the article!


 

okay I refined my previous comment based on your new inputs.

Here are the steps you like to take, when translating and reading for example Spanish, while your native language is Chinese.

1. Visit a page with Spanish text.

2. Highlight a line or sentence, right-click and select "Read Aloud selection"

3. Edge starts reading the Spanish text for you, using Spanish natural native voice.

4. (not yet implemented) since your language preference is set to Chinese in Edge (edge://settings/languages), Edge will show Chinese translation of that line above/below the original Spanish line.

5. (not yet implemented) so now you see 2 horizontal rows (Chinese and Spanish). the highlighted word, which means the word that is being read by Read Aloud at any moment, needs to represent both the original Spanish and the translated Chinese equivalent, so you see 2 highlighted words at any time (1 for Spanish and 1 for Chinese translation).

6. (not yet implemented) Romanization of the sentence: so, for example, Hello in Russian is "Привет" but an English speaker might not be familiar with Russian (Cyrillic) alphabets, so Edge will show "Priviet" (the actual pronunciation of Привет). this extra piece of information can appear when you hover over the word that is being read at the moment, with mouse cursor or finger touch. it's going to be a in a 3rd row or a bubble.

4,5,6 should be optional, so people that don't use Edge for learning new languages won't be distracted and forced to use it.

@GatesLover 

Spoiler

@GatesLover wrote:

@HotCakeXMaybe your understanding could be another mode! I call it translation comparation mode

① Split the passage into sentence "." "!" "?"

② Each sentence might have a translation layer or a Romanization layer

③ Each have a trumpet icon, and if you click the icon, Edge will read the sentence.(I was inspired by the Longman dictionary reading)

GatesLover_0-1607345602918.png

Here is a model paragragh:

GatesLover_2-1607347813378.png

The  following is the translation comparation mode

GatesLover_1-1607347751880.png

Click the icon and you will here the TTS audio of that sentence

 


please take a look at my last comment and if there is any refinements needed, let me know.