ARTICLE
Text To Speech in Windows Phone
We'll be using Google's Text To Speech Engine in a Windows Phone 7 Application.
Alright, as you may very well know, you can translate any word using Google Translate. But Google has a secret weapon; a builtin Google Translate.
When you view this webpage, you will see a HTML 5 video tag.
If you've tried to use this webpage in a WebBrowser control, this trick won't work. I am also pretty sure that the Internet Explorer in WP7 doesn't support HTML5.
Let's get back to our topic. When you open that website you'll see a video player:
If you're using Google Chrome, when you right-click on that control and click "inspect element" then this is where the Developer Tools will display now.
See the HTML tag there:
It has a source with a type "audio/mpeg" that means we don't need a Webbrowser.
All we need is : MediaElement!
Before we start coding, my page looks like this:
And its XAML:
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Transparent">
<TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="109,74,0,0" TextWrapping="Wrap"
Text="Text To Speech" VerticalAlignment="Top" FontSize="36"/>
<TextBox x:Name="txt1" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Height="72" Margin="10,184,0,0"
TextWrapping="Wrap" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="460"/>
<Button Content="Speak!" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="169,256,0,0"
VerticalAlignment="Top" Click="Button_Click_1"/>
<MediaElement x:Name="med1" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Height="248"
Margin="10,354,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="460"/>
</Grid>
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First add a static variable to store the page URL:
public static string path = "http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=";
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Then in a button click event write these:
med1.Source=new Uri(path + txt1.Text);
med1.Play();
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Now run it!
Enter something into your Textbox then click the "Speak!" button.
Everything will be working fine.
Hope that helps!