Make your computer read Chinese web pages to you

I’ve been looking at some “Text to Speech” software. At first I was just looking for something to read web pages to me while I did other things, like have breakfast. After much trial and error I originally settled on Natural Reader.

Then I thought how great it would be if I could find one that would read Chinese. Unfortunately however I am much more interested in reading web pages from Taiwan than from anywhere else, and they are all written in Traditional Characters which most readers don’t seem to recognise. This is not to say that I am not interested in being able to read Simplified Characters at all, it’s just that Traditional is of much more use to me in general.

Anyway I had no problem finding software to read Simplified Characters. Speech Chinese was one of the best that I found. Eventually I did find just one text to speech reader that can read both Simplified and Traditional. YellowBridge Talker is also very easy to use. Just highlight some text, right click and choose “pronounce text”.