CereProc Adds Dutch to Its TTS Portfolio

Text-to-speech technology provider CereProc has added Dutch to its range of commercially available synthetic voices.

CereProc developed the Dutch language synthetic female voice, named Anne, in partnership with Dedicon, a producer of accessible versions of books, maps, magazines, and exam papers in audio formats, large print, and braille to support the disabled.

"It's been fantastic working with Dedicon to develop a voice that enables Dutch language speakers and readers to access important materials and ultimately improve the dissemination of information to a wider audience," said Paul Welham, CEO of CereProc, in a statement. "To enter the commercial markets of the region with a text-to-speech voice that is compatible across multiple channels is a significant move. Offering users a greater choice and potentially increasing the adoption of this assistive technology for a number of applications, we felt it valuable to create a TTS voice that enables Dutch language users to better engage with the technology and the world around them."

CereProc currently offers English in a number of region-specific accents, French, German, Austrian, Italian, and Spanish synthetic voices for commercial download, while Romanian, Mandarin and Japanese languages are currently in beta phase.

"Pursuing the objective of enabling users across the globe to engage with text-to-speech systems in their own language is of great importance to us. Opening up new markets to us while supporting those in need of assistive TTS whose native language is Dutch, I'm certain that developing our Anne voice is a crucial step in CereProc's expansion strategy, and we're looking forward to the coming months' operations with our increased European language repository," Welham added.