Edit: Some of the following links have now been disabled by Google. However, accessing Google Translate directly still gives you text-to-speech capability.
Have you ever wanted to send a short message through spoken word but didn’t have the time or hardware to make a recording, transfer a file to your computer, and upload online? Google Translate’s existing text-to-speech functionality from last month’s update enables you to do just that.
All you need to do is to put your own text in this url: http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=text. For example, http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=i+love+christmas gives you “I Love Christmas.”
As you can imagine, this capability can be both useful as well as comedic. Unfortunately, the only language for speech output seems to be English for the time being, but imagine the usefulness of an updated Google Translate that can output custom audio for exactly what you want to say, in whatever language you choose. Could be amazing for travel as well as for those in the process of practicing for high school Spanish or French oral exams. We’ll see what happens.
In the meantime, have fun with this new use for Google Translate, and happy holidays from SocentVC!
