Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Yes, this is what I'm saying.
Also the further the novel is from realistic everyday American English set in a real American place today the more work it is. Forget 1920s cozy mysteries or even Westerns. Don't even think about Fantasy and SF. Also humans often can tell from context what the pronunciation will be (Galway vs Paris vs London settings written by an author in British English.) even without a guide. An Irish person that knows no Irish will get places and names in Ireland and Scotland right in a novel written in English. Some can get Welsh, English and French places right too.
The comparison isn't with teenagers failing English Lit, but people that that have read books out loud for years, or acted (theatre), or worked on radio, TV or Movies, or narrate audio books for a living (a profession over 125 years old).
Edit: Curiously the Google "tool" offered had choice of voices (with British, Australian accents, not just "American"*) but ignored proper language tags in the ebook. It assumed the work was all US English. That can certainly be fixed, but why offer something unfinished? They claim the result can be sold as audio books on the Playstore.
[* I have no idea about Australia, but the USA and English accents I have encountered are diverse. There isn't really any such thing as a British accent and I suspect there is no such thing as an American accent, based on talking with people in different parts of NY, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Boston as well as Texans, and others from diverse US States I've met elsewhere.]
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You have to tell human voice actors how to pronounce made up and obscure words and names too. I bet as tools mature unfamiliar words or phrases will be pointed out and easily addressed.
I think AI narrating is more geared for books where it just doesn't make economic sense to get a professional voice actor in the first place. It wouldn't make sense to spend thousands on a real voice actor, a good studio setup, engineer, etc. for an audiobook that will be lucky to sell 500 copies. But maybe it makes sense to spend to a few hours and a couple hundred dollars on an AI service.
A handspun, handwoven, handsewn, tailored garment has the potential to be much nicer than a factory spun, factory woven, factory sewn one size fits all shirt. But it's also going to be magnitudes more expensive. Same deal here.