AT&T expands software to support German

AT&T Labs became more multilingual, expanding its text-to-speech systems to speak German, the company announced Tuesday. Its software, called the Natural Voices text-to-speech engine, also supports English and Spanish. The software operates on many kinds of technologies, from large-business servers to desktop PCs. AT&T says the advantage of the software is that it supports all three languages simultaneously, so a company that offers voice portal services can use just one AT&T product to serve its international customers. The software enables customers to add their own voices or use AT&T's "voice fonts," which work like text fonts to provide a particular character to a document through different voice sounds, tones, accents and inflections. AT&T calls its ready-made German fonts Reiner and Klara and uses Rosa for its Spanish-language font. The software can even understand and read back profanity.