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In the Works – AWS Region in Milan, Italy
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- whalesalad 8y agoThe front-and-center 'voiced by AWS Polly' dogfooding is great but it sure does sound like crap. Ironically it struggles to pronounce the word Milan.
- jeffbarr 8y agoI am happy to share feedback with the Polly team! Can you be more specific about what you believe sounds bad?
- shawabawa3 8y agofor what it's worth I thought it sounds fine. Maybe Milan sounds wrong to an Italian, but it sounds like how most Americans say Milan to me
- martin-adams 8y agoYeah, I think you're right. I suspect the Italian pronunciation is like 'me-lan' rather than 'mil-an'. As for the general sound, I thought it was pretty good. I was impressed that Polly even adds in inhaling of breath. Subtle, yet effective.
- DrNuke 8y agoItalian pronunciation for Milano is here: https://www.comesipronuncia.it/pronuncia/milano-10397 https://www.comesipronuncia.it/pronuncia/milano-10397 . That said, Italians generally mean the UK’s received pronunciation when studying and listening to English language, so heavy American accents are way too large and quite difficult to us.
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- chrisper 8y agoImho it speaks way too fast.
- int0x80 8y agoIt is not too bad, but is not 'Maelan' but 'Meelan'.
- smcl 8y agoWell the English word "Milan" is already mangled compared to the Italian "Milano" - taking the italian pronunciation for the English word would be ... odd. I'm pretty confident that in the anglosphere "Mee-lan" would be the minority pronunciation compared to "Mih-lan".
- DrNuke 8y agoMilan Kundera pronunciation comes neat though https://www.pronounceitright.com/pronunciation/milan-kundera-1527 https://www.pronounceitright.com/pronunciation/milan-kundera... , that’s how we are used over here.
- smcl 8y agoMaybe it's because the name is Czech and we never anglicised his name? I honestly don't know with that one though. English is wildly unpredictable, if we drilled down deep enough we'd find plenty of counter examples that contradicted my reason for how we pronounce pan Kundera's first name :-) However for the city, think of it this way (sorry I'm gonna use some awful phonetic spelling here!) you and all the other Italians use the 100% correct pronunciation of Meelano. Somewhere back in History it became normal to call it "Milan" in English. Calling it Meelan is not only still wrong in Italian, it's also wrong (or nearly unused) in English. It's the same way you have your own word for our city with its own pronunciation - Edimboorgo. If I say "well, that 'u' in the original 'Edinburgh' is pronounced uh so you should call it Edimbuhrgo" then you're now pronouncing it wrong in both Italian and English. For what it's worth I'd prefer it if English kept the original names - Milano, Torino, Roma, Napoli, Firenze, etc :D Edit I realised after typing this that I've heard wealthier Americans pronouncing some of these names even stranger still. Milan becoming Milawwn and Prague becoming Prawwwg which is like nails on a chalkboard to me, so maybe I can identify with you a little bit :-)
- simon_acca 8y agoOther than the "milan" pronunciation issue that others have outlined: the same word is pronounced in exactly the same way every time, which sounds wrong especially in long words such as "availability". The speed is too uniform; Polly handles commas (and full stops) brilliantly but there are other occasions in which a huan speaker pauses ever so slightly, for example to take a breath. Humans don't pronounce every single word fully, which contribute to make speech sounds fluid, this seems to be lacking completely from Polly.
- CivBase 8y agoWhen humans read aloud, they usually sound pretty bad. We tend to read sentences word-by-word instead of breaking it down into parts. I have no idea how Polly actually works, but it sounds to me like it is reading word-by-word like many humans do. I'm (probably overly) conscious about how I read things aloud. If I can't read a sentence quietly before I read it out loud, I try to diagram it as I go. For instance, if I identify what I'm reading as a prepositional phrase, I give it less vocal emphasis. Subjects and predicates usually get the most emphasis. Of course, what I described is much easier said than done. I wouldn't be surprised if you were already doing it. Good luck with Polly moving forward and thanks for being so willing to take user feedback!
- lfx 8y agoFor me constantly gasp before sentences sound bit weird. It would be better if this occurs only after long sentences, would sound more natural. Nevertheless sounds really good!
- dx034 8y agoI thought the same. It would probably sound more realistic without the gasping. Most human speakers wouldn't gasp that audibly and at different parts of the text.
- calabin 8y agoAfter going back and forth between the article and the comments, I just realized that you're the author / Chief Evangelist at AWS. So on a sort of meta-note, I think it's pretty cool that AWS is still interacting with developers at this level.
- Immortalin 8y agoIt would be really great if the general intonation can be improved to be nearer to Wavenet level. Also a lot of continental Germanic words e.g. Swedish, Dutch, Deutsch etc. and Français-derived words embedded in an English text won't be pronounced properly regardless of context. Source: I run an ebook to audiobook converter https://auditus.cc https://auditus.cc
- ckdarby 8y agoCan anyone provide any insights into specifically why Milan, Italy? I see that AWS already has 3 regions in Europe.
- puzzle 8y agoIt's relatively well connected to both Southern and Northern Europe?
- eknkc 8y agoYeah, There is a huge internet exchange in Milan and a lot of submarine cables to Middle East, India etc go through Italy.
- puzzle 8y agoOn the other hand, Italian courts were the most wiretap-happy in Europe a while ago (and not very tech-savvy), so perhaps I'd think twice before running anything there. I bet/hope Amazon got good lawyers to handle that.
- toyg 8y agoIf you are going to come out in a Middle-Eastern country, that's the least of your worries.
- org3432 8y agoThe network latency from Frankfurt to Italy is often unstable and does cause problems for video games I know. It's odd, but it's measurable, no idea why however.
- ttul 8y agoI couldn’t help but recall this joke: Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian and it's all organised by the Swiss. Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lover's Swiss, the police German and it's all organised by the Italians.
- whafro 8y agoSubtle variation: Heaven is where the food is Italian and the engineering is German. Hell is where the food is German and the engineering is Italian.
- muxator 8y agoPlease allow me to show a little bit of national pride (the parent comment it's a joke, I know...). While absolutely terrible at organizing (on a _fractal_ scale: from the smallest details to the big picture), and affected by a less than optimal state of the economy, we have a pretty good engineering tradition. I have met astonishing engineers in Italy (and in Germany as well, and Russia, and USA, and so on...) with deep theoretical knowledge and a strong hands on experience. Edit: clarified, not to be taken too seriously
- DrNuke 8y agoSchools were good and the hands-on experience was made from very young age locally before than abroad as adults. Such depth is going lost, though. In that sense, this new AWS region in Milan should bring some operational jobs which will hopefully go to local workforce to keep this tradition going.
- RankingMember 8y agoThe parent is a joke based on stereotypes that I think excels partially because it pokes fun at all nationalities involved. I wouldn't take it too seriously. :)
- tristor 8y agoItalian engineering is truly incredible, producing some of the most cutting edge advances the world has seen... until they catch fire.
- sandstrom 8y agoAnyone who knows when EU-North-1 (Stockholm region) will open? Supposed to open by the end of the year.
- WaxProlix 8y agoVery soon.