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Google text-to-speech in mp3 format

Terminal - Google text-to-speech in mp3 format
wget -q -U Mozilla -O output.mp3 "http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8&tl=en&q=hello+world
2011-03-08 14:05:36
User: sairon
Functions: wget
30
Up
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Google text-to-speech in mp3 format

EDIT: command updated to support accented characters!

Works in any of 58 google supported languages (some sound like crap, english is the best IMO).

You get a mp3 file containing your query in spoken language. There is a limit of 100 characters for the "q" parameter, so be careful. The "tl" parameter contains target language.

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 8 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
say() { mplayer "http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=$1"; }
2011-09-08 03:34:24
User: daa
Tags: mplayer google say text to speech
13
Up
Down
Gets the english pronunciation of a phrase

Usage examples:

say hello

say "hello world"

say hello+world

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
say(){ mplayer -user-agent Mozilla "http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=$(echo $* | sed 's#\ #\+#g')" > /dev/null 2>&1 ; }
2011-03-13 21:10:26
User: return13
Tags: google google api speech text-to-speech text to speech
10
Up
Down
Google text-to-speech in mp3 format
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
p=$(echo "hello world, how r u?"|sed 's/ /+/g');wget -U Mozilla -q -O - "$@" translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en\&q=$p|mpg123 -
2011-09-19 23:06:15
User: jhansen
Functions: echo mpg123 sed wget
Tags: google google api speech text-to-speech text to speech
4
Up
Down
Google text-to-speech in mp3 format

same but redirecting to player and putting whaever text line.. works on my ubuntu machine ...

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
curl -A "Mozilla" "http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=hello+world" > hello.mp3
2011-07-01 20:59:33
User: gean01
1
Up
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Gets the english pronunciation of a phrase

Sends a string to google tranlator, which converts it to English speech.

It's possible to create a nice script to do the job for us, such as

#!/bin'bash

curl -A "Mozilla" " /tmp/speak.mp3

mplayer /tmp/speak.mp3

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
say() { local IFS=+;mplayer "http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=$*"; }
2011-09-08 13:02:46
User: RanyAlbeg
Tags: mplayer google say text to speech
1
Up
Down
Gets the english pronunciation of a phrase

Usage: say hello world how are you today

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

Wow, I could spend all afternoon listening to my name in different European accents :-)

Comment by flatcap 118 weeks and 5 days ago

I tried this with Vietnamese, which I enter using unicode on a text editor and paste into the command line. However, I get nonsense back in the mp3 file. My command:

wget -q -U Mozilla -O output.mp3 "

It plays fine in the browser, which converts the URL:

http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=vi&q=%C4%90o%C3%A0n

However, when I paste this url in the command line, I still get giberish:

wget -q -U Mozilla -O output.mp3 "

Any suggestions?

Comment by vinhdizzo 118 weeks and 5 days ago

I can't seem to get it to work, too. I guess it is an issue with wget? http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?20863

Maybe curl will work?

Comment by sairon 118 weeks and 5 days ago

You could try piping the desired text into iconv to convert it to UTF-8 and only after that pipi the text into wget.

Comment by sairon 118 weeks and 5 days ago

I tried piping to iconv: no go.

curl also doesn't work.

Comment by vinhdizzo 118 weeks and 5 days ago

it works great, i change it to function

### usage: texttospeach en hello+world

texttospeach() {

wget -q -U Mozilla -O output.mp3 "

}

Comment by chmurli 118 weeks and 5 days ago

We now can play the sound live without the need to save the mp3 file before with a bash function ( a bash builtin replace all spaces by the + caracter ) :

say() { curl -s -A "Mozilla/5.0" "http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=${@// /+}" | play -t mp3 -; } say "hello world"
Comment by sputnick 116 weeks and 6 days ago

Note on the previous command : requires sox

Comment by sputnick 116 weeks and 6 days ago

I've written a small ash shell script which can handle text flowing from a pipe and also gives you a warning when you exceed the 100-character limit. http://saironiq.blogspot.com/2011/03/google-text-to-speech-api.html

Comment by sairon 116 weeks and 5 days ago

I use wget with Google Translate to send sound to my Airport Express device: http://www.geekytidbits.com/2011/05/text-to-speech-through-airtunes/

Comment by bradyholt 105 weeks and 1 day ago

Are there alternative voices? Like male / female?

Comment by jesuisbenjamin 38 weeks ago

AFAIK there are no alternative voices

Comment by sairon 37 weeks and 6 days ago

Your point of view

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