Attached Link: http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/index.html

For those of you who are interested in making your own animations, but can't afford to hire the voice actors you need to get it just right, here's a new way to get there. Natural language simulators have made great strides over the last few years. AT&T has a demo of their latest effort at the attached link. You can choose different languages, and for English, two accents (American & UK). You can also choose male or female. Some of them are better than others. The Spanish female I thought was fairly realistic, as was the UK female. The male and female American accents were still very "computerish". I didn't try the German or French; I'll let you German and French members of the community let us know...:-) In any case, here's a good chance to animate that favorite scene from Shakespear (or Marvel Comics) that you've been wanting to try, no voice actors required. "Holy Simulated Voices, Batman!" "

Well the french language simulation just sounds good: a neutral male parisian accent. No female voice simulation available. Though the voice as something sad in it, that might be what you call "computerish". My 2 cents.

Rosa, the Spanish voice lady is excellent, but this program not have Mac version. Why? The Spanish Macintosh, in classic version, have Mexican voices. Catalina is your name. This is very amusing, but Rosa is perfect.

Speech synthesis technology has improved considerably in the last few years. The state-of-the-art has moved considerably away from the robotic monotones of yesteryear, and some speech engines are now capable of inflection.

Listen to these examples of accents and dialects using the Rhetorical Systems rVoice speech engine:
Prerecorded
Interactive

(I love the California valley-girl accent.)

Dare to compare! Sixteen speech engines go head-to-head in this extensive comparison:
http://www.tmaa.com/tts/comparison_USEng_highres.htm

Pay particular attention to the samples from Aculab and AT&T, and especially Loquendo and Voiceware.

For me Natural Voices run very well in Nestcape but very bad in the Explorer. Why?

Wow, I think I'm in love with the Scottish voice at Rhetorical Systems! Can I get her phone number? Amazing stuff.