Eloquens (software)
Text-to-speech software
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eloquens, (commonly known under the alias Er Finestra) is a text-to-speech software, whose first version was released in 1993 by CSELT. It was the first commercial speech synthesis software able to speak Italian.
| Eloquens | |
|---|---|
| Other names | Er Finestra |
| Developer | CSELT |
| Release | 1993 |
| Stable release | 2.5
/ 2002 |
| Operating system | Windows |
| Available in | Italian |
| Type | Text to speech |
| License | Proprietary Freeware |
Description
It was the first commercial product of the research center CSELT in the field of voice technology. It was built with diphone-technology aimed to reach a high computational efficiency.[1] As a result, the produced voice is still "robotic", but more natural than the previous generation voice implemented in MUSA[2] by CSELT itself. In the past, ELOQUENS was applied to automatically read timetables in the Italian train stations[3] and some telephone services provided by Telecom Italia, e.g. the automated address book service.[4]
In 1997 Eloquens was also used as a building block (synthezer module) in dialogue systems.[5]
In summer of 2001, Eloquens has been used in the Italian radio station, Radio DeeJay, as part of a character named Er Finestra created by the radio station.[6] Following of that, an updated version of Eloquens has been released in 2002 on Windows by a user called DaNieLz,[7] using Er Finestra as software name. This updated version, features a theme applied to the program window with the logo of Radio DeeJay, and some new words and symbols has been added in the internal files, but leaving the voice engine and the features as the original.
Er Finestra turned to be the most famous version of the program, as it can be installed on Windows operating systems without problems.
Nowadays, both Eloquens and Er Finestra can be found as freeware: it is nowadays typically used in spoken comments in many YouTube videos, as well by voice acting characters.