Thanks to a comment left by Jim Spirialis on my last post, I was made aware of yet another text-to-speech option. This is another one that will run either from the desktop or from a USB flash drive. Of all the PC text-to-speech software that I’ve tried, this may well be the best of the lot.
Balabolka is a Russian word that means “chatterer”. Balabolka is also very good free text-to-speech software for the PC, running in all versions of Windows–from Windows 2000 through Windows 7. There are two versions of the program, one that is installed on a host computer, and a portable version that will run from a USB flash drive.
Balabolka’s user interface is similar to other PC text-to-speech programs, but it can be customized with the use of skins. Text can be input directly. Or, it can be copied and then pasted in. Balabolka comes bundled with an impressive set of built-in tools, including magnification (2X to 16X) and spell checking. Keyboard shortcuts have been programmed for accessing Balabolka’s functions. This software will create audio files from text–MP3, WAV, OGG, WMA.
Balabolka is available in the following 15 languages: English; Bulgarian; Chinese, Czech; Dutch; French; German; Hungarian; Italian; Polish; Brazilian Portuguese; Romanian; Russian; Spanish; Ukrainian.
Balabolka’s very clean default user interface is shown below.
January 27, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Very nice. Just what I need. Thanks Paul and Jim
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August 20, 2010 at 6:09 am
I recommend Panopreter Plus ( http://www.panopreter.com ) to Windows 7 or vista users, The software reads aloud text and converts the text to mp3 and wave audio files with the voice of Microsoft Anna. It includes toolbar for Internet Explorer, so when you surf online, you can listen to the spoken speech too.