i use my phone as an education tool as i attempt to master japanese. use its translate capabilities to play text to try to hear how things are pronounced. one nightmare of learning japanese is many “words” have completely different pronunciation dependent on the surrounding words. so it’s vital to hear different examples.
unfortunately, the translate voice is typically too fast. things are slurred and therefore misheard by my non-native ear.
so can you slow it down? no, you cannot. hunted high and low for some way of changing its speed. nowt.
amazingly, there are two entirely separate voices in ios. one is the voice siri uses. in [accessibility] you can change the speed of that one. the other is the voice used by translate.
it doesn’t appear possible to use the siri voice to play the same text. if someone has figured out how, i’d be chuffed to know.
tried google translate. it’s next to impossible to use. their user experience is about par for the course for the chocolate factory.
but believe i found the answer sought:
under accessibility->spoken content is a toggle for “speak selection”. that adds a “speak” item to the popup generated from selecting text. it also recognises the language so the correct siri voice is selected. and that one i can control the speed thereof. it’s even a tad more reliable than translate which often cacks because of some network glitch between me and cupertino. of course, it’s the last item so one must fumble-finger to it.
if it’s any help, mark, my english is a bastardised combination of british (wannabe), canook (origin), and 1930s california (too many hammett novels at an influential age) thus not to be relied upon. also eschew capitals for reasons … none good.
but i do recommend the goon show for your pursuit of separation reduction.
Thanks for the tip! Coincidentally, my wife has taken to binge watching British game shows on You Tube. Coming into our house, you’d think you weren’t in the Colonies anymore…and a nice callout for Mr. Hammett, inspiration/basis for some of my favorite movies, The Maltese Falcon and the Thin Man series.
Henry and Min … on long car trips I often make sure I have a few episodes of the Goon Show to listen to. Spike’s twisting/contortion of the english language is brilliant.
For the OP’s issue, maybe give feedback to Apple or the developer. Sometimes they actually listen and act!
works for me. for example, spent years looking for a recording of
Persistent questioning failed to refresh Mr. Crun’s memory as to the identity of Mr. Henry Crun, beyond the remark, “Henry Crun? Mnk–isn’t that the name of–mnk–Henry Crun?”
only to finally learn that it had never been used in any goon show.
i think we’re doomed to creating our own. i’ve been goonifying computers since i was first let loose on the things. here’s but one (two really):
return to mac and the last ever boring beige windows98 box, its screen tiled with peter spike and harry.
