Text-to-Speech in Languages other than English

[Last updated 3 August 2010]

OS X only offers US English text-to-speech voices, and they are not of a very high quality. Apple’s voices are OK to listen to for short passages like getting your computer to speak the time, but if you use text-to-speech very much you’ll probably want to purchase a higher quality voice. Leopard’s “Alex” voice is a great improvement on the ones available before Leopard came out, but even that voice is jarring and mechanical to listen to for more than a few minutes and only offers American English. So what are your alternatives for text to speech?

Note: “System Voices” mean that the voice can be used in any program that has text-to-speech ability and can be used with VoiceOver or to speak selected text. You won’t see them as a separate program, the voice will appear in the list of voices on your computer.

Cepstral

Implementation: System Voices.
Languages: US English, UK English, Italian, Canadian French, German, Americas Spanish, and some odd “character” voices including a dog barking!
Compatibility: 10.3.9-10.6.*.
Trials available: Demos for all Cepstral voices are available online and you can download and try the voices before you purchase them. There’s no time limit on the trial but they insert messages in the audio output about the voice not being licensed.
Price: Around US$30 for each voice, see online store.

AssistiveWare InfoVox iVox

Implementation: System Voices.
Languages: American English, British English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, French, French Canadian, German, Greek, Icelandic (not with Snow Leopard), Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Spanish (Castilian), Spanish (American), Swedish, and Turkish. All non-American English languages include one American English female voice as a bonus.
Compatibility: 10.3.9-10.6.*.
Trials available: Samples for all InfoVox iVox voices are available online and you can download and try the voices for 30 days before you purchase them.
Price: Priced per language, most languages having multiple voices. From US$99 for the first language, see price details.

ConvenienceWare GhostReader

Implementation: Read selected text in programs, GhostReader program can read and export to iTunes tracks, and other features.
Languages: American English, Arabic, British English, Czech, Finnish, French, Canadian French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, American Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Norwegian, Russian, Turkish and Swedish. GhostReader itself is localized in English, French, Italian and German.
Compatibility: 10.3.9-10.6.*.
Trials available: Samples for all GhostReader voices are available online and you can download and try GhostReader for 15 days before purchase.
Price: From US$39.95 for one language with discounts for just about everything, see price details.

Cereproc

Implementation: System Voices.
Compatibility: Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard.
Languages: Scottish English, American English, Southern English (Southern England, not Southern USA), West Midlands/Black Country (Black Speech), German, Austrian-German, French.
Trials Available: Samples only are available on the website.
Price: £s;29.99 per voice.

Speechissimo

Speechissimo has officially been discontinued and is no longer available. This entry is left for reference.

「ドキュメントトーカ」 / DTalker

Note: Website is in Japanese only – details translated for me by a friend. I suggest that you consult the website yourself for details.
Implementation: System Voices, VoiceOver implementation (?), DTalker editor.
Compatibility: 10.4-?.
Languages: Japanese (8 voices), English.
Trials available: Samples available on website, trial version for download.
Price: 9,975 yen (approx US$100) for full program. Slightly less for download-only version.

MacKEY5

Implementation: Text-to-speech within program. Also provides other features such as Chinese fonts, dictionary, Pinyin input, etc.
Languages: Mandarin.
Compatibility: 10.2.4-?
Trials available: Download and try MacKEY5 for 30 days before purchase.
Price: US$195.00

eSpeak Macintosh Installer

Implementation: Text-to-speech within eSpeak Mac Utility program. System Voice planned for future.
Languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Armenian, Cantonese, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Kurdish, Latvian, Lojban, Macedonian, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese, Welsh. The quality of some of these is very low, others are better. The Languages page has more complete information and will always be up to date.
Compatibility: ?
Trials available: N/A
Price: Free – eSpeak is open source software that anybody can use free of charge.

This is all the Mac OS X voices I am aware of at the moment, with all the relevant information I can find about them. If you have more up to date information or know of any voices in any languages that I’ve missed, please let me know so I can update the list.

- Ricky Buchanan