<p>"It converts text that is already coded in the computer into speech or audible wave forms. We have it in both Tamil and Kannada and it takes a fraction of a second to read what is written," A G Ramakrishnan, Professor of Department of Electrical Engineering at IISc and project head, told PTI.<br /><br />Ramakrishnan was here to present a paper in the Tamil Internet Conference as part of the ongoing World Classical Tamil Conference.He said the project has been named Tirukural (the ancient Tamil collection of couplets), with a pun on "kural" which also means 'voice' in Tamil.<br /><br />While there was a similar TTS software in Hindi, there was no such one available for other Indian languages, he said.<br /><br />The research team has tied up with Bangalore-based St John's Hospital for a pilot project of this software, which could be used only with Tamil unicode.While Ramakrishnan wanted to do a complete Tamil software, he had to cope with the reality that the spoken language is also interspersed with English words, especially among Tamil speakers.<br /><br />"The next version of Tirukural will bridge this gap which has not been cared for in the present version," he said, adding it will be ready by a week or so.He said globally, hundreds of thousands of dollars were being invested on TTS for English but little investment had been done for regional language. <br /></p>
<p>"It converts text that is already coded in the computer into speech or audible wave forms. We have it in both Tamil and Kannada and it takes a fraction of a second to read what is written," A G Ramakrishnan, Professor of Department of Electrical Engineering at IISc and project head, told PTI.<br /><br />Ramakrishnan was here to present a paper in the Tamil Internet Conference as part of the ongoing World Classical Tamil Conference.He said the project has been named Tirukural (the ancient Tamil collection of couplets), with a pun on "kural" which also means 'voice' in Tamil.<br /><br />While there was a similar TTS software in Hindi, there was no such one available for other Indian languages, he said.<br /><br />The research team has tied up with Bangalore-based St John's Hospital for a pilot project of this software, which could be used only with Tamil unicode.While Ramakrishnan wanted to do a complete Tamil software, he had to cope with the reality that the spoken language is also interspersed with English words, especially among Tamil speakers.<br /><br />"The next version of Tirukural will bridge this gap which has not been cared for in the present version," he said, adding it will be ready by a week or so.He said globally, hundreds of thousands of dollars were being invested on TTS for English but little investment had been done for regional language. <br /></p>