Looking for a tool that can convert English text to its phonetic

Paul   Friday, January 23, 2004, 05:05 GMT
Is there a software or a website that allows me to convert a series of English texts to their phonetic symbols?
I'm trying to make a transcript written purely in phonetic symbols but it takes just too much time to do it by hand.. Help~
Lavoisel   Friday, January 23, 2004, 08:57 GMT
A software with a dictionary integrated in it would do that. A software able to read a dictionary on CD-rom is another alternative.
I'm not sure either exist.
Lavoisel   Friday, January 23, 2004, 09:11 GMT
Shogo   Friday, January 23, 2004, 11:08 GMT
Paul,
I know there's one even though it's a Japanese website... all you have to do is basically copy & paste (or type) what you want to transcript and click on the submit button, so I'll give you the URL anyways.

http://www.kt.rim.or.jp/~s_aoki/english/text2pron/

You'll see two buttons; the one in the left is the submit button, and the one in the right is the reset button.
Lavoisel   Friday, January 23, 2004, 17:55 GMT
Shogo, thanks.
The converter from the Japanese site seems much easier to use than the one from the Irish one, especially because you don't need to master software compiling to use the latter.
Yet, I'm not too sure this software is reliable 100% because it seems to often offer three phonetic transcriptions of the same word. So, since I'm not too familiar with the I.P.A, I was wondering if someone could tell if this is normal or if this happens only because the software doesn't know the proper pronunciation?

Many thanks.
Paul V.   Friday, January 23, 2004, 20:08 GMT
Hi Lavoisel

You are not in Kanvas anymore.
Get Real.
Don't You know that some common English words have a different pronunciation in different contexts.
THE is pronounced thuh if the word following it starts with a Consonant,
otherwise it can be pronounced thih or theh.
We say "an" instead of "a" before a word starting with a vowel.
You usually say tu:, if you are going to a place.
For example. I have to go to the office.
You usually say tuh, if you need to do something.
For example: I need tuh run every day.
Infinitive form to+verb

Regards, Paul V.
Lavoisel   Friday, January 23, 2004, 20:51 GMT
Hi Paul V,

I thank you for your advising me to "get real" and realise that "I'm not in Kanvas any more", but I was only trying to know whether this software is reliable or not.

However, you have answered my question and I wish to thank your for it. ;)
paul   Friday, January 23, 2004, 22:39 GMT
Thanks guys. I've been looking for this ages.
Tom   Saturday, January 24, 2004, 00:28 GMT
Paul V. is right. There are many ways to say a single sentence.
Lavoisel   Saturday, January 24, 2004, 01:01 GMT
Hello Tom. I did not doubt about what Paul V says, although I didn't mention it very explicitly in my previous post.
Thank you, however, for your confirmation. This software seems to be very useful.
Shogo   Saturday, January 24, 2004, 02:59 GMT
For your information... I got it translated by this website-translation system on the web. Even though I know most of the translated sentences are weird or some of them dont even make sense, it should be make more sense to you than the Japanese version.

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kt.rim.or.jp%2F%7Es_aoki%2Fenglish%2Ftext2pron%2F&lp=ja_en&tt=url

and apparently, this system is based on this american pronunciation dictionary provided here:
http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict
and because there are lots of different pronunciation given for some frequently-used words such as the(thee, thuh) and for(for, fur).

Hope it helps. I'll try the Irish one Lavoisel recommended:)
Lavoisel   Saturday, January 24, 2004, 16:37 GMT
I did not recommanded it, you need to know how to compile a software to use that one and it doesn't seem very user-friendly. Yours is much better for you just have to enter your text and clic. ;)