Microsoft uploads Vietnamese to text-to-speech translator

Microsoft Translator has added Vietnamese to its text-to-speech synthesizers, promising some much-needed assitance for foreigners traveling to the Southeast Asian country.

The tech giant said in a new statement that it has added Bulgarian, Croatian, Malay, Slovenian, Tamil and Vietnamese to its list of text-to-speech languages, taking the number of supported languages to 36, BetaNews reported on Friday.

Microsoft text-to-speech voices are speech synthesizers that work with software such as Microsoft Speech API (SAPI) or the Microsoft Speech Server Platform.

The languages are now available on Bing Speech API, Translator Text and Speech APIs, as well as end-user products, Microsoft said.

“You can use text to speech to quickly communicate with others, or to learn how to pronounce foreign words and phrases,” it said, before making an example of Vietnam.

“You are visiting a museum in Vietnam, you’ve found the building but can’t find the entrance. You can just type, 'Where is the entrance to the museum?' into your Microsoft Translator app to translate to Vietnamese, push the speaker button for text to speech, and you can play the audio to ask for assistance,” it said, as cited in the report.

Text-to-speech mobile support for the six new languages is currently limited to Android.

Vietnam received nearly 2.9 million foreign arrivals in the first two months of this year, up 30 percent from a year ago, according to official statistics.