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Quick Voice Prompts with Google Translate TTS Service

Google last month released several new features to their translation service among them a text-to-speech rendition of the English translation.  As reported elsewhere, it turns out you can directly access this service using a simple URL in your browser.  Following this link will return an MP3 of the text sent along with it:

http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=Hello+reader

Just replace “Hello+reader” with any text that you want spoken in your address bar.  Remember to replace spaces with pluses (+).

Some browsers however seem to have problems with the returned audio.  Chrome worked for me, though Internet Explorer is reportedly working as well.

As this is not an official RESTful Google API don’t be surprised if it stops working. Beware that commercial reuse of the output audio is likely also governed by license restrictions.

Update:
Friend Schamai pointed out how this could be employed in a web form. Here’s an example:


Or the corresponding HTML:

<form action="http://translate.google.com/translate_tts">
<input name="q" size="55" value="just saying" />
</form>

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 9:53 am and is filed under Brands, Fun, How To, Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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