Reading Japanese with NVDA 2022.2
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Sharni-Lee Ward
The New Releases page said that Japanese was added to Espeak as well as the packaged Braille Tables. I want to learn Japanese (I started learning in school, then left school, and that was a good fifteen years ago now), and just found out the browser version of Duolingo is accessible with NVDA.
However, I've checked with a couple things (I'm a part of a number of anime fandoms), and NVDA doesn't switch to Japanese when reading passages, instead continuing to say "Japanese-letter" several times, or if I'm scrolling over it, "Japanese-letter" plus several numbers that I suppose are it's unicode designation? But anyways, it is not reflecting the addition of the language bank in Espeak NG. And I know the ProTalker addon has not been compatible for years, though even if it were, there were some weird pronunciation issues with even that. Is there something I am missing here? |
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Do you have automatic language switching turned on in Speech settings?
Also, and this is not meant as snarky, are you certain you are using Espeak as your synth? I'd also suggest, once you're certain that automatic language switching is turned on in NVDA, that you give the Microsoft OneCore Japanese a try, if for no other reason than testing. It does support text to speech. -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H2, Build 19044 The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly. ~ Vance Packard |
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David Goldfield
Also, if we’re talking about a Web page the developer(s) of the page need to be using the language attribute correctly. Just having the page being written or displayed in the Japanese language won’t switch the synth language to Japanese if English is still being used as the default or primary language. Of course, if the synth has been set to Japanese and if it’s still not speaking correctly then this is a bit outside of my wheelhouse.
David Goldfield, Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist
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From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of
Brian Vogel
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2022 2:09 PM To: nvda@nvda.groups.io Subject: Re: [nvda] Reading Japanese with NVDA 2022.2
Do you have automatic language switching turned on in Speech settings? Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H2, Build 19044 The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly. ~ Vance Packard |
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On Sun, Jul 24, 2022 at 02:13 PM, David Goldfield wrote:
Also, if we’re talking about a Web page the developer(s) of the page need to be using the language attribute correctly. Just having the page being written or displayed in the Japanese language won’t switch the synth language to Japanese if English is still being used as the default or primary language.- I'll just say that this completely accurate observation can be extended to any document where multiple languages are used. It is up to the author(s) of said material to correctly specify when a language is switching away from, and back to, the primary language and to specify correctly what language is being switched to. If none of that's in place there is currently no AI involved as far as knowing that a language has switched. Switching is directly dependent on the necessary markers being present in the source material. -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H2, Build 19044 The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly. ~ Vance Packard |
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Shawn
The question is did you switch ESpeak's language to Japanese. With some synths, they just won't work with Japanese or some other foreign alphabets at all unless you add language packs in Windows. I just opened a Japanese Wikipedia page with the following results. Japanese Eloquence read it in Japanese. ESpeak Japanese read Japanese letter this, Chinese letter that. You may want to check out this page about installing language packs in Windows, or find a synth that will work without them.
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https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/language-packs-for-windows-a5094319-a92d-18de-5b53-1cfc697cfca8 Shawn Klein On 7/24/2022 12:58 PM, Sharni-Lee Ward wrote:
The New Releases page said that Japanese was added to Espeak as well as the packaged Braille Tables. I want to learn Japanese (I started learning in school, then left school, and that was a good fifteen years ago now), and just found out the browser version of Duolingo is accessible with NVDA. |
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Sharni-Lee Ward
Espeak NG, yes. It's the only one now so I just call it Espeak out of habit. And yes, I know I'm using it, as I am very familiar with the voices and what they're capable of. :)
I do have automatic language switching turned on, but not automatic dialect switching. Is this important?
I don't have any non-English 1Core voices installed and truth be
told, don't know how I might get more. There was this lovely
British guy called George who got installed one update and
disappeared in another, and I miss him. :( On 25/07/2022 4:08 am, Brian Vogel
wrote:
Do you have automatic language switching turned on in Speech settings? |
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Sharni-Lee Ward
I need it to read the English text as normal and the Japanese
text as Japanese, be it a single line or a passage in the midst of
English instructions. It does not currently do this and this could
pose problems when learning. The ProTalker addon used to do it but
alas... On 25/07/2022 4:13 am, David Goldfield
wrote:
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Sharni-Lee Ward
This makes me sad. I just wanna learn the language I had to drop
in school because I couldn't afford to take the course then, and
Duolingo is free... But also there is the problem of Kanji
symbols, which are interpreted as Chinese characters (which to be
fair, they were first, but not in the context I need them in).
Getting NVDA to do two languages simultaneously seems to be beyond
us and I am saddened. On 25/07/2022 4:25 am, Brian Vogel
wrote:
On Sun, Jul 24, 2022 at 02:13 PM, David Goldfield wrote: |
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Sharni-Lee Ward
Since Eloquence is paid and I don't like it anyways, that's not an option for me. I dunno how, if at all, those packs would help, and I don't want to change synths. Anything without inflection settings (including most paid synths) sounds woeful to my discerning ears.
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On 25/07/2022 6:30 am, Shawn via groups.io wrote:
The question is did you switch ESpeak's language to Japanese. With some synths, they just won't work with Japanese or some other foreign alphabets at all unless you add language packs in Windows. I just opened a Japanese Wikipedia page with the following results. Japanese Eloquence read it in Japanese. ESpeak Japanese read Japanese letter this, Chinese letter that. You may want to check out this page about installing language packs in Windows, or find a synth that will work without them. |
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David Goldfield
Sharni-Lee wrote: > I need it to read the English text as normal and the Japanese text as Japanese,
As I wrote this can only happen if the Web site uses a specific language attribute in their code when switching to a new language. The code is normally hidden but it tells the Web site, “Hey, this next block of text that I’m about to write is actually Japanese.” When writing English text a similar code needs to be entered which tells the Web site, “the following text is in English.” Of course, NVDA needs to have language switching enabled in the Voices dialog, as well.
David Goldfield, Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist
Subscribe to the Tech-VI announcement list to receive news, events and information regarding the blindness assistive technology field. Email: tech-vi+subscribe@groups.io
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of
Sharni-Lee Ward
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2022 5:03 PM To: nvda@nvda.groups.io Subject: Re: [nvda] Reading Japanese with NVDA 2022.2
I need it to read the English text as normal and the Japanese text as Japanese, be it a single line or a passage in the midst of English instructions. It does not currently do this and this could pose problems when learning. The ProTalker addon used to do it but alas... On 25/07/2022 4:13 am, David Goldfield wrote:
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Sharni-Lee Ward
I was responding to each message as I read it, so I didn't see yours until after I wrote that.
I don't think the Duolingo site does this, sadly. I started in on Spanish this morning, and NVDA didn't change language for the Spanish words, meaning the pronunciation was botched 80% of the time by the screen-reader. They have little voice clips whenever you press a button corresponding with a non-English word though, so at least I won't be botching pronunciations.
This will not help me with Japanese if I can't hear the symbols
being properly identified, of course. On 25/07/2022 7:30 am, David Goldfield
wrote:
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David Goldfield
Sharni-Lee, No problem. I would encourage you to contact support and ask them to use the language attribute. For reference, here’s a page which discusses the relevant WCAG criterion. https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/language-of-parts.html
David Goldfield, Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist
Subscribe to the Tech-VI announcement list to receive news, events and information regarding the blindness assistive technology field. Email: tech-vi+subscribe@groups.io
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of
Sharni-Lee Ward
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2022 5:54 PM To: nvda@nvda.groups.io Subject: Re: [nvda] Reading Japanese with NVDA 2022.2
I was responding to each message as I read it, so I didn't see yours until after I wrote that.
I don't think the Duolingo site does this, sadly. I started in on Spanish this morning, and NVDA didn't change language for the Spanish words, meaning the pronunciation was botched 80% of the time by the screen-reader. They have little voice clips whenever you press a button corresponding with a non-English word though, so at least I won't be botching pronunciations.
This will not help me with Japanese if I can't hear the symbols being properly identified, of course. On 25/07/2022 7:30 am, David Goldfield wrote:
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David Goldfield
I should have explained that WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. They document standards to ensure that Web sites are accessible.
David Goldfield, Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist
Subscribe to the Tech-VI announcement list to receive news, events and information regarding the blindness assistive technology field. Email: tech-vi+subscribe@groups.io
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of
David Goldfield
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2022 6:01 PM To: nvda@nvda.groups.io Subject: Re: [nvda] Reading Japanese with NVDA 2022.2
Sharni-Lee, No problem. I would encourage you to contact support and ask them to use the language attribute. For reference, here’s a page which discusses the relevant WCAG criterion. https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/language-of-parts.html
David Goldfield, Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist
Subscribe to the Tech-VI announcement list to receive news, events and information regarding the blindness assistive technology field. Email: tech-vi+subscribe@groups.io
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of
Sharni-Lee Ward
I was responding to each message as I read it, so I didn't see yours until after I wrote that.
I don't think the Duolingo site does this, sadly. I started in on Spanish this morning, and NVDA didn't change language for the Spanish words, meaning the pronunciation was botched 80% of the time by the screen-reader. They have little voice clips whenever you press a button corresponding with a non-English word though, so at least I won't be botching pronunciations.
This will not help me with Japanese if I can't hear the symbols being properly identified, of course. On 25/07/2022 7:30 am, David Goldfield wrote:
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Michael Munn
Is far I know NVDA do not have the capability of doing that in Windows. I am able to do that on my Mac when I read my text in Chinese. Best regards Michael H. Munn
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of David Goldfield
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2022 6:02 PM To: nvda@nvda.groups.io Subject: Re: [nvda] Reading Japanese with NVDA 2022.2
I should have explained that WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. They document standards to ensure that Web sites are accessible.
David Goldfield, Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist
Subscribe to the Tech-VI announcement list to receive news, events and information regarding the blindness assistive technology field. Email: tech-vi+subscribe@groups.io
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of David Goldfield
Sharni-Lee, No problem. I would encourage you to contact support and ask them to use the language attribute. For reference, here’s a page which discusses the relevant WCAG criterion. https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/language-of-parts.html
David Goldfield, Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist
Subscribe to the Tech-VI announcement list to receive news, events and information regarding the blindness assistive technology field. Email: tech-vi+subscribe@groups.io
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of Sharni-Lee Ward
I was responding to each message as I read it, so I didn't see yours until after I wrote that.
I don't think the Duolingo site does this, sadly. I started in on Spanish this morning, and NVDA didn't change language for the Spanish words, meaning the pronunciation was botched 80% of the time by the screen-reader. They have little voice clips whenever you press a button corresponding with a non-English word though, so at least I won't be botching pronunciations.
This will not help me with Japanese if I can't hear the symbols being properly identified, of course. On 25/07/2022 7:30 am, David Goldfield wrote:
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On Sun, Jul 24, 2022 at 05:01 PM, Sharni-Lee Ward wrote:
I don't have any non-English 1Core voices installed and truth be told, don't know how I might get more.- Settings, Time & Language, Language Pane. In the Language Pane, activate the Add A Language button. Enter the language you're looking for in the search box then review the search results (sometimes there are multiple dialects and sometimes multiple voices in a given dialect). If the intention is for a screen reader to use that language for reading, make sure that the text-to-speech attribute is one of those shown for the specific language item you are reviewing. There are a number of language items that do not support text-to-speech, though a great many do. -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H2, Build 19044 The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly. ~ Vance Packard |
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Shawn
I've done a bit of Googling about this, and it seems that it's actually whoever created the ESpeak voice's fault. As best as I can figure, they left out loads of kanji and made a real mess of it, so you're out of luck unless someone gets around to fixing it. A lot of ESpeak voices are broken in some way.
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This guy outlines a lot of them from a linguist's point of view here. https://nvda.groups.io/g/nvda/topic/83236633?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate/sticky,0,,20,0,540,83236633 Shawn Klein On 7/24/2022 4:10 PM, Sharni-Lee Ward wrote:
Since Eloquence is paid and I don't like it anyways, that's not an option for me. I dunno how, if at all, those packs would help, and I don't want to change synths. Anything without inflection settings (including most paid synths) sounds woeful to my discerning ears. |
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Shawn
I hate to tell you this, but most websites don't even bother with
that stuff, and when they do it's usually to use the wrong
language attribute altogether. I turn language switching off and
never use it lest I end up on a website in English where the site
builder put in a German attribute. One would think there would be
an automated way to include them where needed, but I don't think
there is, and I don't think you're going to convince a website
owner to comb through his site setting the right language
attributes for each phrase in a given language on pages where more
than 1 languages are present. It's been useless from the beginning
IMHO. People are impressed by the idea, but it's just not
practical. Shawn Klein On 7/24/2022 4:53 PM, Sharni-Lee Ward
wrote:
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Shawn,
As often happens with "raw URLs that contain odd characters," the one you posted broke even though there are no gaps in the text itself. For those who want to read the topic referred to, see: A few questions about NVDA, eSpeak NG, and languages (non-programer) -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H2, Build 19044 The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly. ~ Vance Packard |
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On Sun, Jul 24, 2022 at 06:42 PM, Shawn wrote:
I don't think you're going to convince a website owner to comb through his site setting the right language attributes for each phrase in a given language on pages where more than 1 languages are present.- After the fact on a general purpose website, you're almost certainly correct. But any website that's supposed to be about language learning, if they care about accessibility (and that, sadly, is an "if"), should certainly be using language marking attributes correctly. I'd expect the same for professionally published materials where there is frequent switching between languages, at least for recently created materials. I once worked with a client who was using materials that were written in English with a lot of Swedish mixed in. Nothing could automatically read (or OCR) this correctly as there were no language markers and, in the case of OCR, it used either English, or Swedish, but not both for any given pass of the document. -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H2, Build 19044 The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly. ~ Vance Packard |
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Shawn
A lot of synths will read English and Japanese both because they
don't share an alphabet. The one-core voices mentioned by someone
in this thread may do this without worrying about website owners
compliance. RHVoice doesn't support Japanese, but it's free and
open source, so if nothing else works for you you might want to
just check on it from time to time and see if they've added
Japanese. https://rhvoice.org/ Shawn Klein On 7/24/2022 4:30 PM, David Goldfield
wrote:
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