Text To Speech in Windows Phone

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.

Normally, you can listen to text spoken using the web page here: http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=HelloWorld

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:

 

<video controls="" autoplay="" name="media" __idm_id__="772538369"> <source src="http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&amp;q=Hell%20World" type="audio/mpeg"> </video>

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>

First add a static variable to store the page URL:

public static string path = "http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=";

Then in a button click event write these:

med1.Source=new Uri(path + txt1.Text); med1.Play();

Now run it!

Enter something into your Textbox then click the "Speak!" button.

Everything will be working fine.

Hope that helps!