Add-on for example sentences + audio readings

[Eddison]

Is there an add-on that has colloquial example sentences plus audio readings for those examples?

I know Pleco has example sentences with the definitions but they are really limited, academic and not very useful.

If you take a look at the Japanese dictionary app "Japanese" it has amazing example sentences. Everyday + academic examples. You can also copy any of the text.

Also the Chinese dictionary app "trainchinese" has good and plenty of example sentences with audio. It's a slow app because it needs an internet connection plus it's subscription service. Plecos performance is better but Pleco could really benefit from these example sentences.

Thanks

 

[mikelove]

We've actually gotten a lot of compliments on our example sentences - some of them are a bit dated (which we're working on) but in general most of our customers seem quite happy with them. We are planning to add an additional database of examples from Tatoeba once we've gotten it converted but that probably won't be for another release or two - that's the source of the ones in Japanese, I believe.

Most of our add-on dictionaries have additional examples, some of which you may find better / more colloquial - Tuttle for example has quite a lot of them.

Audio readings are coming in our next update via a synthetic text-to-speech system - no current plans to produce native speaker recordings for all of our examples.

 

[Eddison]

Ahh ok I guess the dictionary is the reason. Is there a site where I could view the Tuttle example sentences? If I like it I would buy the Tuttle add-on.

Also how difficult would it be to have audio readings of the example sentences? How do the other dictionaries do this? Do you think there is potential for an add-on?

 

[mikelove]

If you download the demo version of Tuttle you can browse through examples from some entries through that. Amazon doesn't seem to have previews of this exact edition but a similar edition with most of the same examples is here.

Honestly, for Chinese we aren't sure if there's enough of a difference between a native speaker and a high-quality TTS system (like the one we've licensed) to justify the time and expense (not to mention the drain on our users' iPhones' storage capacity) of recording tens of thousands of examples; you can hear a sample of our TTS in action here. (we plan to offer this as a paid add-on with the new update - there'll also be access to iOS' free built-in Chinese TTS, but the quality from that is a good bit lower)

 

[Eddison]

The Amazon link. Does it have audio examples? I searched that page but to no avail. I'll check out the Tuttle add-on demo.

"Our TTS"? Do you mean the quality of the male/female add-ons? Yeah they're good quality but only for the entries not example sentences.

With the storage capacities of iDevices I'm sure TTS for example sentences wouldn't be a problem.

So you are saying the next update will include TTS that will allow us to select a Chinese example sentence in an entry and then I will have "pseudo TTS" example sentences right?

p.s. Do you know if NCIKU is using sentences from dictionaries or their own sentences? Can you not use the same source they are using if it's from a 3rd party source?
I'm asking because I'm curious about how they can do it with the paid version. I am trying their online version right now but it's really bad. No audio playback.


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[mikelove]

No, it's a different thing we licensed - if you listen to that sample I linked you can get some idea of what it sounds like. And yes, the next update adds a speaker icon after every example to listen to audio via TTS - free via the TTS system built into iOS or a higher-quality paid version via the licensed one I just mentioned.

 

[Eddison]

Thanks. How much will that add-on cost? Will the speaker icon appear after examples sentences only in the basic free default PLECO dictionary or will it appear in any add-on dictionary?

Also I have installed the Tuttle demo. The first time I clicked the bottom left icon it did switch between CC/PLC/Tuttle but now it doesn't switch to Tuttle. There's no option. Only PLC/CC. It just disappeared. Hmmm

EDIT: Ah, found out why. The demo version has to start with an "a" lol


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[mikelove]

Not sure - probably somewhere in the $5-$15 range like our other feature add-ons, but we're still trying to decide about that. The icon should appear in any dictionary with examples, free or paid - you can also have it read along in texts in the clipboard / document reader.

Demo versions are another thing we've improved, now you get a nice friendly "browse entries" screen instead of awkwardly trying to find them in a search.

 

[Eddison]

Yeah, I know you said you got compliments on your default example sentences, and they are good grammatically of course, but the majority of them are not very conversational. I just checked the TL sentences and they are a breath of fresh air. More like the sentences in the Japanese dictionary app "Japanese".

With your help and great quick replies I feel confident in purchasing Tuttle, Audio pronunciation Male, OCR and Flashcard system. Btw, I think male/female audio should be in the same add-on all for the same price as a single voice. Two prices for the same audio is a bit steep. I guess that's not your choice as it's 3rd party?

Hey, the restore function is of course not dependent on device right? Any device with the same Apple ID can restore the same add-ons right?

Can I get rid of the (slider reading function) and (traditional/simplified)icons? They are crowding my menu bar and I only need Simplified. If not an update to this would be great. The ability to hide/show any icons we want.

Thanks again

p.s. Are you guys Canadian? I'm from Vancouver. Living in Japan though.

 

[mikelove]

Audio isn't 3rd party, but we generally like to keep things as divisible as we can so mix and match new add-ons later; we might for example add a second / alternate version of one of those voices at some point.

Restore function is only dependent on Apple ID, yes.

Those icons you mention are going away in the new update, in fact there's no longer a bottom toolbar at all.

I'm American, my wife actually is Canadian but she's not involved in Pleco except in a cheerleading capacity

 

[Eddison]

Glad those icons will be scrapped! They get in the way! lol Well maybe in the future you could have both a (male/female standard quality) and a (male/female high quality) add-on or something.
Maybe I'm the only one but it feels similar to when devs charge for an iPad version that is the same as an iPhone version. It's like just the screen size is the only thing separating the two versions but in this case it's only the sex of the TTS talent.

Yeah I was wondering if you were a Canuck because of the cdn checkout. That's cool she's a Canuck! Good job! lol

p.s. I'm psyched for your new version. I dig deep into Japanese and Chinese language functionality and UX so if you need another BT let me know.

Your CS is exemplary btw. Thanks

 

[mikelove]

I'd say it's equivalent to charging for two different dictionaries even though they cover most of the same words - two voices are still twice as much work / cost as one voice.

To me the iPad/iPhone thing is a question of how much code was recyclable - if an app consists primarily of UI and that has to be done over from scratch for an iPad version, it doesn't seem that unreasonable to charge twice based on effort (though business-wise it might still be wise to go Universal because the marginal value to a customer of an iPad app when they already own your iPhone app is much lower). For us, though, since the vast majority of Pleco's code / data / etc works identically on both platforms and the iPad- and iPhone-specific stuff represents at most maybe 5% of the total it would be slightly ridiculous to make everybody pay again.

 

[Eddison]

I didn't know it was that complex. I thought they were just Voice List Retrieval requests for TTS where you could change parameters using SSML
like <voice>chchinesefemale</voice> etc without much effort. Variable pitches and locales etc available in SDKs like Nuance|iSpeech etc.

 

[mikelove]

For TTS, yes, but the audio modules you're talking about aren't TTS, they're native speaker recordings of each word.

 

[Eddison]

Curious, since iSpeech/Nuance sound so good, is it not possible to use TTS for both definitions and example sentences even if it has to be requested via markup? Do dictionary developers prefer audio modules because they are on the device and not requested?

 

[mikelove]

Sure, if you prefer TTS you can buy our new TTS module (or use the lower-quality system one) and not bother with the recording modules.

Did you listen to the sample of our offline TTS? We think that's at least as good as Nuance/iSpeech. We prefer not to rely on online services for stuff like this because a) they waste a lot of bandwidth (particularly important to us as we have a huge number of customers in China with lousy / unreliable internet access), b) they can sometimes lag / temporarily become unavailable, c) they can't be trusted to stay in business forever, and d) they can't be trusted to even maintain the same business terms forever.