As you know, among many reading lovers there are people who prefer audio books. There are many advantages to using the latter. After all, while listening to audiobooks, your hands are not busy, you can go about your business and simultaneously enjoy your favorite texts. But what to do in a situation where there is no audiobook of the author you need online? Then various network services can come to the rescue, allowing you to reproduce the lines you need by voice. In this article we will look at a selection of the top 10 programs for voicing text online.
List of services for voiceover of text
When analyzing services for reproducing texts, it is important to understand that you will not achieve an ideal “human” sound from such programs. The speech synthesizer often places stress incorrectly, spaces between words are too short or too long, incorrect intonation is chosen, and so on.
Paid voiceovers are usually of higher quality, and often allow you to reproduce text for advertising purposes only for a limited number of characters (for example, text up to 200-300 letters). Free ones, accordingly, may not have such restrictions, but the quality of the voices they reproduce may be questionable.
Let's move on to a list of 10 programs for reproducing printed words and sentences using a virtual robot.
Place number 10. Oddcast.com - allows you to read the text by voice online in any language
The English-language service oddcast.com boasts three Russian voices in its functionality (Dmitri, Milena, Olga), as well as a pleasant visual component. At the same time, the voices reproduced by the service sound rather robotic, and the accents in words are often placed inappropriately. The number of freely reproduced offers is limited to a couple of hundred characters (you will have to pay extra for more).
To voice the required text, you need to do the following:
- Launch oddcast.com, in the “Language” option select “Russian”.
- In the “Voice” option, select one of the presented voices.
- In the “Enter text” window, enter your text.
- Then click on the “Say It” button to read the words by voice.
Visually pleasing oddcast.com
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Place No. 9. Rapidtables.com – free speech synthesizer
The rapidtables.com service allows you to voice words in average quality. Among the languages presented on the resource there is a Russian female voice that reads the text submitted by the user quite well. At the same time, the timbre sounds somewhat “sepulchral”, and users sensitive to aesthetics are unlikely to be pleased with this sound. It is better to launch the service on the Chrome browser. There are no restrictions on the volume of readable text on the resource.
To play you need:
- Go to rapidtables.com.
- Click on the arrow next to the line “US English” and select “Russian”.
- Then insert the text you want to read into the window and click “Play”.
Average quality resource rapidtables.com
Place No. 8. Ispeech.org – reproduction of online offers of average quality
Ispeech.org is another average quality resource for listening to spoken words and sentences. The free functionality of the service is limited to 150 characters, there is support for more than 20 languages with the ability to choose a male or female voice. Reading the text is at an average level. The service often chooses intonation and tempo incorrectly.
The instructions are quite simple:
- Launch ispeech.org.
- In the languages window, select “Russian”.
- On the right, enter your text and click on “Play”.
Functionality of the Ispeech.org service
Place No. 7. Naturalreaders.com – English-speaking robot
The naturalreaders.com service does not support the Russian language, but it reproduces English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and other languages quite well. The free functionality of the service includes 20 minutes of free voice-over per day, support for various text files, and various playback voices.
To use the program, you need:
- Launch naturalreaders.com.
- Paste text into the form below.
- Select a language and click on “Play”.
English naturalreaders.com
Yandex translate
The Russian analogue of the previous service, Yandex.Translator has all the functionality provided by Google: adding audio files to the “Favorites” section, a speech generator, translation from hundreds of world languages and a virtual keyboard. To use all the features provided, authorization in Yandex.Mail is required; there are no paid services.
The only thing that distinguishes Yandex.Translate from Google Translate for the better is that the number of characters available for speech in the domestic analogue is twice as large and reaches 10,000 characters.
Place No. 6. Ttsreader.com – decent level of virtual voice acting
As in the case of the previously mentioned rapidtables.com, it is better to run the ttsreader.com service on Chrome - the resource works more stably in this browser. There are no restrictions on the length of the text, there are two versions of the Russian voice (“Russia G**” and “Russia Microsoft Irina Desktop”), and the reading of the text itself is at a decent level.
For voice acting you need:
- Log in to ttsreader.com.
- Select one of the presented Russian language options.
- Enter the text in the appropriate field, select the pronunciation speed next to it (normal speed – normal, fast – fast, slow – slow, etc.), and then click on the “Play” button (with the arrow) a little higher.
Voice playback on ttsreader.com
From Text To Speech
The record holder for the length of text available for voice recording is the online “talker” From Text To Speech, which can process up to 50,000 characters. This is more than any other similar service with wide functionality.
In the service, you can enter text and select one of 8 languages, speed (4 modes available), as well as voice acting. For the Russian language, only one, female voice generator is available, for English - five, both female and male. One of the disadvantages is that converting text into an audio file requires a fairly large amount of time - it takes up to 10 seconds to process one word. However, as a result, you can download the track to your own PC absolutely free. This is another significant advantage of the service over competitors, where they will require payment for this function.
Place number 5. Translate.google.com - standard Google translator
The most popular Google translator in the world can also read the necessary texts in an online voice. There are no restrictions on the volume of characters, you can insert any size and listen to the voice sound (only one Russian female voice is available).
Procedure:
- Activate translate.google.com through your browser.
- On the left, select Russian, and then enter the text you want to read in the window.
- To start playing, click on the speaker icon below.
Classic Google Translator
Google Translate can also be used
The well-known Google translator online has a built-in text-to-speech function, and the amount of text read here can be quite voluminous.
- To work with it, log in to this service https://translate.google.com/.
- Select the Russian language in the window on the left, and click on the “Listen” button with a speaker at the bottom.
The playback quality is at a fairly tolerable level, but no more.
Place number 4. Acapela-group.com – a service for reproducing short texts
Using the capabilities of the site acapela-group.com, you can voice text of up to 300 characters. The service is English-language, only one Russian voice is supported (Alyona), the quality of pronunciation of which is at a good level.
The instructions are quite simple:
- Log in to acapela-group.com.
- On the left, in the “Select a language” field, select “Russian”.
- In the “Type your text here” field, enter your text.
- Check the box next to “I agree with the terms..”, and then click on “Listen!”
Voiceover of text on acapela-group.com
Recommended reading: How to change your voice online without downloading.
Place number 3. Readspeaker.com – will read the text in Russian online
The readspeaker.com service is one of the most worthy in terms of sound quality. The Russian female voice acting presented on the service is quite natural. Unfortunately, the free functionality here is limited to the demo version with reading text of up to 250 characters.
To read, do the following:
- Launch readspeaker.com.
- Among the presented voices, select “Russian-female”.
- Enter your text and then click on “Listen”.
Readspeaker.com working window
Bing translator online with word pronunciation
This is also a long-standing translator - the brainchild of Microsoft. There are fewer different “chips” here, but the interface and quality are also quite acceptable.
- More than 50 languages.
- Again good quality.
- The interface is a little worse, but nothing.
- Text input field up to 5000 characters.
- There is a pronunciation.
- Unfortunately, voice input is missing and handwriting input is missing.
- But the dictionary opens by clicking on each word - other meanings of the word from the dictionary are given.
So, we looked at three translator options. They all translate at approximately the same quality, apparently thanks to statistical translation algorithms. Their essence is that a huge array of data is accumulated on original-translation pairs, and the translation is taken from this array, if it is in it. So, apparently, the array is already available everywhere – all translators have it. In this case, grammatical rules are of course also used in combination with accumulated statistics. And remember that a dictionary, unlike a translator, is always a better alternative. And if time is tight, you need to translate with a dictionary. Now among the most complete and convenient dictionaries, Lingvo Live can be noted for its quality.
Place number 2. linguatec.de – quality German service
The German service linguatec.de offers one of the best voice sounds among its competitors. There is support for female and male Russian voices, which sound quite smooth and organic. The free functionality of the resource is also limited to 250 characters.
For voice acting you need:
- Go to linguatec.de.
- Select Russian language (Russisch).
- Select a voice option a little higher – “Milena” or “Yuri”.
- Then enter the text itself and click on the button with the arrow (“Play”).
One of the best resources for this plan is linguatec.de
This is interesting: How to recognize a song by sound online.
Assistant "Alice": voiceover of text via browser
Since March 2020, Yandex Alice has the ability to voice texts from almost any web page in Russian.
This technology works on Android mobile devices and Windows PCs. There is no information about support for other platforms, but it is likely that this online voiceover technology will also work on iOS and Mac OS.
The voice assistant reads text from the page in a female voice, ignoring design elements, trying to find basic information online.
In order to voice the text “Alice”, you must:
- Download Yandex Browser (for Android or);
- Open the desired web page, site;
- Press the button with headphones (and give Yandex Browser access to the microphone);
- To read a fragment, you need to select the text and select the “Speak” command in the context menu;
- You can also listen to the text by saying “Listen, Alice, read this page” into the microphone;
