Phonetic Editor
The Phonetic Editor will help you to create and edit dictionaries. A dictionary contains the pronunciations of a word or group of words. It’s used in some technologies like Voice Synthesis to use custom pronunciation with no need to write ssml markups.
Phonetic
A phonetic alphabet is composed of phonemes. Those phonemes represent the smallest unit of a sound that differentiate two word's meaning.
Example (using IPA Representation and American English language):
The word dad has the following transcription: /dæd/.
The word bad has the following transcription: /bæd/.
Those two words don't have the same meaning, and the only difference between them are the /b/ and /d/. We can then say that those are phonemes.
Dictionary
Using the phonetic editor you can generate and correct your phonetic transcriptions and then just copy paste those where you need them, but you might one day reuse them and thus, a place that stores those could get useful.
This is were the dictionary comes in. It's basically a file that associates some text to its corrected transcription. A dictionary contains the pronunciations of a word or group of words. It’s used in some technologies like Voice Synthesis to use custom pronunciation with no need to write ssml text.
Configuration screen
Before using the phonetic editor you must make sure to select a valid language and representation to install. Select and install the language and representation you need.
Language. Select in which language the artificial intelligence will phonetically transcribe the words. As phonetics represent how the word is pronounced, it is necessarily related to the target language.
Representation. Choose the representation of the phonetic alphabet that the tool will use. The choice will affect every other visual element that uses phonetic in this widget.
Apply. After selecting a valid installed language and representation click on Apply to start using the Phonetic Editor.
This screen will be hidden, if you already selected a valid language and representation and the widget was successfully loaded.
Main screen - Phonetic tab
Language. Click on Modify button to select which language the artificial intelligence will phonetically transcribe the words and which voice will be used to synthesize text.
Representation. Choose the representation of the phonetic alphabet that the tool will use. The choice will affect every other visual element that uses phonetic in this widget.
Enter your phonetic. In this section, you will be able to enter your input (one or several words) and compute its phonetic representation according to the options you have chosen.
“Text”: Enter the text you wish to phoneticize in order to correct its pronunciation.
“Sounds like”: Can be used if the phonetic generated from the “Text” field is too far from the correct pronunciation. It can also be used to avoid dealing with phonemes directly as you can write in this field how you would literally pronounce the text yourself. To enable the use of this field just add the word into “Sounds like” field, then click on Transcribe button.
Listen and adjust. In this section, you will be able to modify and correct the pronunciation. You can see the whole set of phonemes that contain the language you have chosen in the options and you can click on any phoneme from the list and see below a word as an example and its transcription.
“Phonetic result” You can add here the phonemes for your phonetic pronunciation. You can also hear how this word is pronounced by clicking the Speaker icon.
“Phonemes list” This is where you can actually see the whole set of phonemes that contains the language you chose in the options. It is most likely that you don't know every phoneme by heart. That's why you can click on any phoneme from the list and see below a word as example and its transcription. You can also hear how this word is pronounced by clicking the Speaker icon.
“Add to dictionary” Once the phonetic pronunciation is correct for you, you can add the new phonetic pronunciation into the dictionary by clicking on Add to dictionary button. This will allow you to reuse this corrected transcription in the future.
If you wish to automatically play the example word pronunciation when you click on a phoneme, you can tick the Auto play checkbox.
To add a phoneme from the list to the phonetic field above, you can either double click on it, or select it and copy paste it with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. It is strongly recommended when using non-ASCII phoneme (such as the IPA representation), to use one of those two methods instead of just typing the phoneme or taking it from somewhere else as UTF-8 encoding can sometimes be a bit tricky.
The phonetic language will serve as the voice language as well. They cannot be different.
You cannot play the phonetic if you don't have any voice selected.
We don’t support yet all the phonemes for vsdk-vtapi’s voices.
Main screen - Dictionary tab
Add a new entry. If you need to add a new word, you can click on Add new entry icon and you will be redirected into the “Phonetic” tab to add the word.
Dictionary. You can specify a file where the dictionary will be saved by clicking on Open icon. If you choose not to specify a file, the dictionary data will only be temporary. It will not be stored in a file on its own and you won't be able to pass it to anyone else easily. You can also open a dictionary by drag and drop from the explorer.
Dictionary content.
“Dictionary table” All the words you have previously added will be listed here. You can change the sort order by clicking on the table header.
“Search” You can filter the dictionary by typing the word you are searching for. It will filter the “Text” column, not the “Phonetic” transcription.
“Delete words” If you need to delete a word from the dictionary table, you need to select its line and click on Delete icon.
“Import/Export table” Select a file to import into this table by clicking on Import icon. Export your dictionary's selected rows by clicking on Export icon.
“Save”: If you want to save your modification to your current opened dictionary click on Save icon.
Open icon | |
Delete icon | |
Export icon | |
Import icon | |
Save icon |
Settings screen
in the Settings view, the phonetic language will serve as the voice language as well. They cannot be different
How to open phonetic editor widget ?
Goto to Playground
Click on Phonetic Editor button to open a new instance or to close an opened one.
You can create an instance of phonetic editor per project.
How to create a dictionary ?
Goto to Playground and open the Phonetic editor.
In Dictionary tab click on Open icon.
Choose a file that doesn’t exist where you want to save your dictionary and click on Open.
How to open a dictionary ?
There is three ways to open a dictionary:
Using the Open icon:
Goto to Playground and open the Phonetic editor.
In Dictionary tab click on Open icon.
Choose an existing dictionary and click on Open.
By drag and drop the dictionary to the phonetic editor widget.
By selecting a project dictionary from the combo-box list. This feature is only available when a project contains at least one dictionary. You can use Dictionary manager widget to add an existing dictionary to your project.