It would be convenient, every now and then, to close your eyes and let the computer speak and read what we asked for in an understandable way. By listening, you can rest your eyes, you can do something else on the PC or, better yet, by standing in other activities away from the computer.
Windows, on its own, also allows you to read text by word and is an assistance feature for those who do not see us.
The computerized voices will not win prizes for their expressiveness, but are perfectly clear and much improved compared to the past, made more natural.
To make the computer speak we have at least 8 ways
1) The Windows voice assistant
Windows also comes with a built-in "text to speech" technology called the Voice Assistant.
The tool is primarily intended for the blind and can be started from the Windows 7 Start menu or from the Windows 8 Start screen using search.
Unfortunately, it is not clear why, however, the Italian voice is missing and must be installed separately.
I'm not sure why it's not easy to find anyway, and you can download the RSSolo4Italian.zip file to have Silvia's Italian voice in the voice assistant .
After installing it, go to the settings of the voice assistant and change the voice.
The Narrator immediately begins reading every text that appears on the screen, excellent for the blind, annoying for others.
Fortunately, Microsoft offers key combinations (see here) to have shortcuts and quickly enable or disable the reading of the speaking PC.
Silvia's voice from the voice assistant is clear, but not quite natural and it gets better.
2) Microsoft Word
Not everyone knows that Word can read written text using the Windows voice assistant voice.
The button to make the computer speak is not included in the interface, but must be added.
Above the tape, on the small toolbar that contains only the Save, Cancel and Repeat keys, press the arrow on the right, select other commands, explore the list of "Commands not present on the ribbon" and find the "Speak" option .
You can also highlight a block of text or select an entire document to be read on the computer.
3) Balabolka, Dimio and eSpeak are 3 great programs that I have already had the opportunity to report in a previous article on how the PC reads a text by voice .
All three support the natural Italian voice.
Balabolka can open ODT .DOC, .DOCX, .TXT, .PDF, .EPUB files directly convert the files to MP3 making them vocal and listenable through an MP3 player such as an iPod or mobile phone.
eSpeak is an open source program for Windows, Linux, Mac that uses different voices, with its own text-to-speech engine.
The program can open TXT files and export them in WAV audio format.
4) TypeIt ReadIt is an excellent free program. with a simple interface and the ability to export written text to a WAV audio file.
The interface is simple and functional and the reading engine uses the entries provided by Windows (therefore see point one for the Italian entry).
5) Natural Reader (Windows, Mac)
The free version of Natural Reader has the limitation of not allowing the written text to be exported in MP3 format, but it works well for listening to the computer that speaks with a natural voice.
In the settings you can choose the Italian language that sounds really good.
Paste text into the program window and let it speak.
The natural Italian language is only in trial in the free version (I think but I'm not sure) and you have to buy the program to have it fixed.
Natural Reader uses the voices of the Microsoft voice assistant so you have to install the Italian one (see point 1).
6) The PC also speaks by reading web pages and websites with Google Chrome.
Just install an extension and take advantage of Google's text-to-speech engine to use Chrome as an Italian website reader .
7) As seen in another article, you can also speak with the computer in all languages with Google Translate
8) ImTRanslator, a Text To speech website to convert written words into a spoken voice, truly natural, even with an animated face.
9) ReadAloud is a very powerful app for Windows 10 and Windows 8.1, to make the PC speak in any language and make it read any text by voice.
In addition to the power of Chrome, to make the computer speak the best program is certainly Balabolka, the one mentioned in point 3, which is also capable of saving audio files to MP3.
