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This is now totally off-topic, but I'd like to know if there is any Googler at all working on adding location tags to their text-to-speech model. Hearing Googl

This is now totally off-topic, but I'd like to know if there is any Googler at all working on adding location tags to their text-to-speech model. Hearing Google Assistant/Maps mispronounce German street or city names in an American accent is very grating to the ears. The pronunciation of a location name should ignore the language spoken, right? (Ignore for a moment the edge cases, like München vs Munich... although the voice says, "Munchin'," which is wrong in both languages!) And it can't be too complicated to borrow phonemes from another language where they don't exist... Right? Your American text-to-speech algorithm encounters an umlaut, then generate the correct waveforms from a language with umlauts. (I'm sure someone reading this is jumping up and down, yelling about the "photo of a bird" xkcd.)

Akronymus 5y ago
Not really comparable to photo of a bird, because using the geographic bounds for what language spoken there should work in 99.99% of the cases. (I have my phone set to english, because I prefer it like that, despite living in austria, europe. Street names are one of the reasons I rarely ever use google maps for navigation)
simtel20 5y ago
It's a hard problem in a way. If my language is localized to English, am I more likely to understand the native pronunciation of a street, or the English mispronunciation?
- PennRobotics 5y ago
  That's true. To extend this idea, should you pronounce someone's name as they pronounce it? Even if you've only known it one way? (The German Michael is kinda... Michh-aye-ehl'.)
  - simtel20 5y ago
    I don't understand if you're presenting this question broadly, in a vacuum? Or if you're still in the context of your question about (mis-)pronunciation of streets etc. while providing navigation for a driver whose chosen language is not the same language as the current location, and who it may be safe to assume cannot understand the local languages' pronunciation even when the alphabet is similar (e.g. an English speaker in a Portuguese speaking country is very unlikely to understand if the navigayor natively pronounces "rua da Heitor do Rio do Engenho", a name I just made up that may exist somewhere, which I think demonstrates the difficulty I'm talking about.)
maxerickson 5y ago
For map information, the map app might better tag the language of the word being sent to the TTS engine.

Akronymus 5y ago

Not really comparable to photo of a bird, because using the geographic bounds for what language spoken there should work in 99.99% of the cases. (I have my phone set to english, because I prefer it like that, despite living in austria, europe. Street names are one of the reasons I rarely ever use google maps for navigation)

simtel20 5y ago

It's a hard problem in a way. If my language is localized to English, am I more likely to understand the native pronunciation of a street, or the English mispronunciation?

PennRobotics 5y ago
That's true. To extend this idea, should you pronounce someone's name as they pronounce it? Even if you've only known it one way? (The German Michael is kinda... Michh-aye-ehl'.)
- simtel20 5y ago
  I don't understand if you're presenting this question broadly, in a vacuum? Or if you're still in the context of your question about (mis-)pronunciation of streets etc. while providing navigation for a driver whose chosen language is not the same language as the current location, and who it may be safe to assume cannot understand the local languages' pronunciation even when the alphabet is similar (e.g. an English speaker in a Portuguese speaking country is very unlikely to understand if the navigayor natively pronounces "rua da Heitor do Rio do Engenho", a name I just made up that may exist somewhere, which I think demonstrates the difficulty I'm talking about.)

maxerickson 5y ago

For map information, the map app might better tag the language of the word being sent to the TTS engine.