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Are there voices in different languages installed in Mac OS X? E.g. spanish, french or slovak? (latest iPod Nano built-in voiceover has beautiful slovak voice, I'd like to try it on Mac OS X too)

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There are a lot new voices in 10.7 (e.g. the Danish one I've been playing with). – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jul 25 '11 at 14:54
@Thorbjørn: that's right, and that's what I've said in my answer as well. High-quality voices for "free", what's not to like? – Peter Štibraný Jul 25 '11 at 15:35
Peter, consider accepting one of the original answers and add a note to your question instead of adding an answer much later and accepting that. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jul 25 '11 at 15:46
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@Thorbjørn: until today, Martins answer was the accepted one. But I don't think it's the best one today. I don't think that changing accepted answer is the wrong practice, but I may reconsider this position. – Peter Štibraný Jul 25 '11 at 17:25

4 Answers

up vote 5 down vote

As far as I know the only way to get a Mac to speak in another language is to get voice resources in your target language. A web site for French blind people recommends iVox.

Sorry, no Slovak there I can see.

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Thanks for sharing the link to iVox. At least there is czech voice, I'll try it. – Peter Štibraný Oct 31 '10 at 18:34
up vote 3 down vote

The voices included in Mac OS X 10.6 are optimized for english only. Even if you set your system language to anything different, it won’t work, because it will try to read with english pronunciation, causing funny wordings. Try saying “Hola” for spanish and you’ll see how it says: “hooola” as an english speaking person would read it.

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up vote 3 down vote accepted

Lion has many more voices, including Czech (Zuzana) and Slovak voice (Laura)!

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up vote 1 down vote

It might be a bit hard to find the international for OS X Lion, this shows how...

http://www.litebeam.net/litebeam/read4me/voices.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RUI5d5L_wr8

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