App: Text-to-speech processing

Discussion Implemented features
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Although this is only about the German translation in the app, I write it in English - because the only one who can make an improvement possible is Emux.

I know that it is only a marginal improvement of the turn-by-turn announcements and I hope that nobody thinks I am a bean counter now. However, I have not yet gotten used to the instructions coming in incorrect German for more than 3 years. I would be interested to know if others feel the same way! By the way, GoogleMaps and Calimoto do it right …

The point is that “Meter” is declined in the dative (by “in …”) and in the plural to “Metern”. For my opinion only a few text strings passed to the TTS would have to be changed:

  • instead of “in xxx m” → “in xxx Metern”
  • instead of “in x km” —> “in x Kilometern”, but if x = 1, then
  • instead of “in 1 km” —> “in einem km”

Here is an audio file with the current and correct announcements: Announcements.mp3

Thank you for a sympathetic review of my request.

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Thanks for the suggestion.

All languages work the same way, I can not make changes for just one language.

The active text-to-speech engine is responsible for the quality of voice guidance.

The recommended is Google Text-to-Speech which should recognize the units.
100 m, 100 ft, 1 km, 1 mi, …

In the future I may change the voice instructions to have complete words in units.
But it is a lot of work for all [voice language] x [unit system] combinations…

So that Samsung and other text-to-speech engines can work better.

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Sure that a “lex German” has extra implementation costs - but GoogleMaps and Calimoto seem to pay it.

I’m using GoogleTTS. The problem is, that it doesn’t recognize the dative if the text beginns with “in …”. And it doesn’t know if it is plural either.

I agree fully if it’s done for all languages.

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It will be available in the next app update.

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Available in Kurviger 2.1.4 (Beta).

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Thanks a lot, Emux :bangbang: Just great. :+1:

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Unfortunately, the latest change broke well-functioning messages in Polish (maybe not only) :frowning:

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Thanks for the report.

I could add a setting to let the text-to-speech engine do all the work
and use the unit abbreviations (as before) or the unit words.

In case you want to suggest improvements, the PL units are:

comma=przecinek
meter=metr
meters=metry
kilometer=kilometr
kilometers=kilometry
foot=stopa
feet=stopy
mile=mila
miles=mile
nautical_mile=mila morska
nautical_miles=mile morskie

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The decimal separator word is probably not needed.

Are there text-to-speech engines that cannot speak “1,5” or “1.5”?

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It’s not that simple… Our ancestors did to spite us by inventing a terribly messed up numeral system!

So for example:

150 metrów / kilometrów / stóp / mil
but…
152 metry / kilometry / stopy / mile

Google TTS handles it surprisingly well, so for the Polish language I propose to leave the abbreviations “m” / “km” (I have not tried feet and miles). Only the number of the roundabout exit is incorrectly pronounced, as I have already mentioned a long time ago. But I got used to it already, though a simple trick would have made even this perfect.

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We cannot add grammar rules in text-to-speech texts
or have each language using different structure:
“first” instead of “1”, “second” instead of “2”, …

It is as simple as “In [N] [unit] turn right” or “At roundabout, take exit [N]”.

So I will add a setting for users that do not like Google text-to-speech
or use another text-to-speech engine that does not understand the units.

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So far it was fine, but it is important that the separator is a comma (not a dot!) Only then Polish Google TTS correctly recognizes it as a distance value - that is, it correctly expands “m” and “km”

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This is perhaps the best option that everyone should be happy with :ok_hand:

As for the roundabout exit number, there is no need to introduce any grammar rules, which of course is impossible. It would be enough “.” (with a dot) for Google TTS to interpret it as an ordinal in Polish. Perhaps only in Polish and only with Google TTS, so I do not insist on such a change.

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The roundabout instruction in PL is “Zjedź z ronda [N] zjazdem”.

Do you suggest to change it to “Zjedź z ronda [N]. zjazdem”
and text-to-speech engine will understand it?

Or the PL translation can be improved?
(like EN “At roundabout, take exit [N]”)

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Exactly! It’ll be fine… until Google breaks something. And as we know they can spoil everything! To make everyone happier, of course :wink:

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We also have to do all this work for the units of the speed limit voice alert.

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Available as option in Kurviger 2.1.5 (Beta).

@Ciutnik please check the PL “Zjedź z ronda [N]. zjazdem” instruction.

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It’s better than good!!! Thank you very much. In terms of Polish speech, nothing else can be improved :ok_hand:

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Implemented in Kurviger 2.1.8.

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