As of today everyone may download and use Carmen, the newest voice of IVONA – the Text-To-Speech system considered one of the best in the world.
“We decided to make Romanian voice for two main reasons – first: Romanian high quality TTS voice was never made before; and second: Romanian language is not easy to build and we like that! Carmen is a female Romanian-speaking voice practically impossible to distinguish from a natural voice. When developing the current version we drew on the experiences acquired during the prestigious international Blizzard Challenge where in 2006 and 2007 our text to speech system received the highest scores year by year. The new Carmen may be of particular interest to designers of telecommunication systems and to hardware and software manufacturers who intend to expand into the Romanian and Moldovan markets” – says Lukasz Osowski, President of IVO Software, IVONA’s creator.
Beginning today, everyone may download a version of IVONA with Carmen’s voice from www.ivona.com. A range of IVO Software’s IVONA-based products makes it possible to implement the text to speech system with Carmen’s voice in various IT and communication systems. One of these products is IVONA Telecom, enabling Carmen’s use in telecommunication systems, such as Call Center or IVR, designed for the Romanian market. IVONA SDK in turn, offers Carmen’s services to hardware and software manufacturers wishing to implement the Romanian-speaking voice in mobile devices, GPS systems etc. If you need a Romanian voice-over for a presentation or if you need to prepare an audiobook you can use IVONA Professional.
Romanian is spoken by over 24 million people – mainly in Romania and Moldova. These are both countries of Central-Eastern Europe. Since 1 January 2007 Romania is a Member State of the European Union.
One can test Carmen and other IVONA-generated voices at www.ivona.com. The website contains also more detailed overview of IVONA-based products and a discussion of their possible applications. Private computer users in turn, can use Carmen or other IVONA’s virtual voices with Expressivo. It is an application that can read any text with a human voice. It may also be used to facilitate learning of foreign languages or to read out film subtitles. Expressivo allows you to listen to books, RSS feeds, Web pages, and e-mails as well – not only using a computer but also with a portable MP3 player (e.g. iPod or iPhone). To find out more about Expressivo visit http://www.expressivo.com.
The speech generation technology developed by IVO Software is regarded as one of the best in the world. This is confirmed by the numerous honors and awards it has won. IVONA’s voice quality was also recognized at the international Blizzard Challenge. Two times in a row, in 2006 and 2007, it was considered one of the closest to a natural voice. IVO Software was established in 2001 and since then it has been involved only in creation and development of speech synthesis technology. To find out more about IVO Software visit: http://www.ivosoftware.com.
