The following description has been slighthly edited and put together, with permission, from several emails by Anne Robertson:
To get VoiceOver to work in a non-English language, you need to create a user in that language.
Assuming you already have VoiceOver working in English, you will need to create a second user, log in as that user, then change the language that user uses.
To create a second user, use the “Accounts” section in System Preferences – you’ll need to unlock the padlock first.
When you have created your second user, log out of your main account and log in again as the second user. To select your language open System Preferences, go to the International pane and select the Language tab. Assuming you are using VoiceOver, interact with the Languages Table, go to the language you wish to use, use Drag and Drop to move it to the top of the list.
Drag and Drop: make sure that the VO cursor and the mouse are on the item you wish to move, press VO-Command-Shift-Space bar to pick up and hold the mouse, turn tracking off, move VO cursor to the place you wish to put the item, move mouse to VO cursor, turn tracking on again, press VO-Command-Shift-Space bar to release the mouse.
Select the third tab if you want to change the keyboard layout for this user also. Interact with the table and use Shift-click to select the keyboard layout(s) you want.
Check the Show Input Menu in Menu Bar checkbox. In this way, you can verify the existing keyboard layout and change it when you want to.Note that when you change the keyboard layout from the Status Menu, it takes effect immediately.
Lastly, set the default voice for this second user to be one in the language you require and log out of that user.
You should now be able to log in as the second user and VoiceOver should function in the other language.
Anne reports success in using VoiceOver in French, but I haven’t heard reports from anybody about how well VoiceOver is localised in other languages – does anybody have the knowledge to report about the quality of VoiceOver localisation in other languages? I can’t find a document on the Apple website about what languages are supported.
Edited to add:
I received the following from Apple in response to enquiring about the localisations:
VoiceOver is localized in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, and Chinese. Mac OS X ships only with English voices, but other language voices can be purchased separately.
- ATMac
Moises Lejter April 2, 2008 at 11:42 am
Is there no way to switch the language that VoiceOver will read in, w/out logging out and back in? I would like to be able to browse web sites that are written in either English or Spanish, and I would like to have VoiceOver read out loud the content of each page – but I would really rather not have to log out, and back in under a different id, just to browse to a site written in the other language…
Thank you!
Moises
Ricky Buchanan April 2, 2008 at 2:19 pm
There’s no way to switch the language that VoiceOver itself uses but I think that AssistiveWare’s GhostReader or VisioVoice would do the job for reading web pages in your chosen language.
- Ricky
Alex Miller February 17, 2010 at 6:20 am
Hi. I need a chinese voice to listen to chinese emails and read chinese web pages. Neither GhostReader or Visio Voice seem to have chinese voices – Do you have any recommendations?
Ricky Buchanan February 20, 2010 at 1:00 pm
@Alex: I believe there’s a Chinese voice listed on the Text-to-Speech in Languages other than English page but I’m not sure if it will work on regular emails/web pages or only within the program itself. You’ll have to try it out and see. I would very much love it if you could tell us how good or bad the program and voice are – I’m certainly not qualified to review the accuracy of a chinese text to speech voice
Gerd Pinnau August 12, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Hi, ladies and gentlemen,
my English is´nt the best -but i´ll try to explain my problem:
My iMac ( controlled by OS X Snow Leopard) is able speeking to accustically. But despite I selected German as language to speek I don´t understand very few of the transmitted text of warnings , explanations or other text contents of macwindows. The reason is very easy: The speaker pronounces German written words by means of English phonetic vowels and consonants. That is audioally very comic but not usefull.
What can I do, the question is here not to select another voice of e.g.Cepstral, Assistiveware only?!
sincerly Gerd
Ricky Buchanan August 14, 2010 at 2:59 pm
@Gerd: Mac computers come with voices suited only to English. You need a German voice from a company like Cepstral or Assistiveware so that the phonetics are suitable for German speech. I personally think that Assistiveware’s voices are better quality, and worth the higher cost, but you can test out both of them before you buy them.
Thisishterealme March 19, 2011 at 11:45 pm
Very strange that you cannot change the language with the rotor or in any other way? On the iPhone it’s to easy and it works so well?
Moises Lejter August 13, 2010 at 11:10 pm
Hi! You did not mention whether you were using VoiceOver.
But this might help – the voice that VoiceOver uses is set independently of the main voice for the Mac: the first is set in the VoiceOver setup app, the second in System Settings->Speech …
Moises
Thisishterealme March 23, 2011 at 9:38 pm
Hi Moises
Thank you for you reply. I do use voice over. I just recently discovered voice over on my iPhone and I’m loving it so much!
But what about on my computer (macbook)?
Is there any way that I can have text on i.e. webpages read in both swedish and english? Is there a way in that I can change the language between these two “on the go” with the web rotor (as I can on my iPhone)?
I tried to look in both System Preferences -> Speech settings and in voice over and cannot find a way to change the spoken language anywhere..
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks
Mark
Thisishterealme March 23, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Ricky writes:
“@Gerd: Mac computers come with voices suited only to English. You need a German voice from a company like Cepstral or Assistiveware so that the phonetics are suitable for German speech. I personally think that Assistiveware’s voices are better quality, and worth the higher cost, but you can test out both of them before you buy them.”
So I guess that theres no way to do it. So strange, when it’s possible to do on the iPhone :-/
Earth August 28, 2011 at 1:05 am
I use the voice over in English on my iPad which is fine but I would like to add 2nd voice language. I couldn’t find any where that I could add 2nd voice, it only allow me to change the voice which is turn out to be horrible. I use Thai for my other voice language. the Thai voice itself is fine but a little difficult to understand and even worse but it say stuff in English. I have no idea what it was saying at all and the Thai voice itself sounded like the person came from country side or something. it doesn’t sound right but somewhat understandable so that is good. But now since I can’t understand any of the English the Thai voice say, how could I make the English voice and the Thai voice be use together with out have to go into setting and change the language every time.
Priscilla September 15, 2011 at 2:17 pm
I am Currently taking courses in both english and spanish and would like to change the languages. I can’t seem to do that with voice over because I have to read large amounts of text in both English and spanish. How do i go about that? Do i have to upgrade to Lion because i’ve heard that Lion can support voices in other languages other than English.