Babel Announces Availability of BrightSpeech Studio
MONS, BELGIUM and STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN - Babel Technologies S.A. and Babel-Infovox AB have announced the availability of BrightSpeech Studio, Babel's first prompt generation tool. The solution is currently Windows-based and offers opportunities for software development companies wishing to create audio prompts with synthetic speech for their products or services. BrightSpeech Studio can be used to enter text, listen to the speech output and convert this output into a speech file. BrightSpeech Studio provides an alternative to recorded speech for call centers, helpdesks, application prototyping, navigation systems and multimedia CD-Roms. The multi-lingual "studio" speech program enables developers to test and refine their speech prompts before converting them to speech files, and offers a solution to replace recorded prompts. The tool is also available with all 18 languages supported by Babil, another Babel Text-to-Speech (TTS) product. "Using technology like BrightSpeech Studio is a key driver behind the development of the speech market, said Vincent Fontaine, CEO of Babel Technologies. "As this market is growing, developers are looking for more convenient, cost effective tools that enable them to implement high quality voice technology. BrightSpeech Studio produces a clear, human-sounding voice, offering an easy to implement and qualitative alternative to recorded speech." Through BrightSpeech Studio's graphical user interface, developers can control and test various speech parameter settings. Once users are happy with the prompt they have created with respect to parameters such as speech rate and volume, they can use BrightSpeech's console application to create audio files and also to convert text-to-speech files off-line. Also from Babel,
Franklin Electronic Publishers Selects Babel's TTS Engine MONS, BELGIUM and STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN - Babel Technologies S.A announced that Franklin Electronic Publishers Inc. (AMEX:FEP) is embedding Babel's Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology, PocketBabil, to bring high-quality speech and intonation to its electronic books. "By combining Babel's high quality text-to-speech engine with Franklin's powerful search and spell correction features, our hand held reference products will benefit from a significant improvement to the user interface," said Kurt Goszyk, vice president engineering and chief technology officer of Franklin. "In a 130,000 word dictionary, for example, even if the word is misspelled, Franklin algorithms provide instantaneous definition lookup. Once the correct definition is found, passing these phonemes to the Babel engine results in high quality synthesised speech that closely parallels that of a normal natural speech." Franklin has sold more than 29 million eBooks through 45,000 retail outlets worldwide, as well as via its Web site, and through its direct marketing operation. "Franklin's decision to use PocketBabil is an industry endorsement of the quality of our speech technology," said Vincent Fontaine, CEO of Babel. "Franklin has recognized that the clarity and pronunciation abilities of our TTS engine is vastly superior to other solutions, and therefore wholly appropriate given Franklin's leadership position in the market."