Garmin Pronunciation

Redeye · Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 8:17 am Post subject: Garmin Pronunciation

We drive down to Spain 3 or 4 times a year and stay off the Autoroutes where possible, and use my Zumo in the car.

After many hilarious hours with tearful eyes listening to "Miss England" direct me through France on our early trips, it has now become a pain in the arse getting directions such as "Take third exit to rudalargenheraldeegowl".

Have not Garmin the skills to be able to recognize that the unit is set to English, but that it is functioning in France/Spain/Germany and
use the current country's pronunciation for POI's and street/road names.

And whilst I'm having my little rant, it's actually the En Ten (N10, Route Nationale 10, etc, etc) and not the North Ten.

There, rant over.

sussamb · Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 10:52 am Post subject:

Well it would if you set it to French or Spanish but then you might REALLY struggle to understand it!

You can't really blame Garmin. Their software can only be based on phonetically pronouncing stuff, and couldn't possibly take account of regional variations and other oddities, like knowing when sometimes to say En and other times North for the letter N Smile

csmale · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 19, 2009 Posts: 1

There must be some kind of intelligence in there somewhere. I live in Holland and have my Garmin Nuvi 265 set to British English (TTS). Using the official Garmin maps it makes a valiant attempt to pronounce the street and town names in a Dutch way. But when I use OSM-derived maps it's like an English person pronouncing it purely phonetically, sometimes with very entertaining results! Example: Emmaweg (Emma-road) which with the Garmin maps comes out as "Emma-wech" (ch as in scottish loch) which is pretty good. With the OSM map it is seen as "Em-org" - it recognises "awe" as a particular sequence of sounds.

So if they can do it for Dutch, why not for Spanish and French?

sussamb · Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 1:02 pm Post subject:

Well I think you've explained it. You say it makes a 'valiant attempt', I'm sure it also makes a 'valiant attempt' in French and Spanish too, but different languages pose different problems. Additionally, what sounds like a 'valiant attempt' to some will sound awful to others Smile

Even in UK some pronounciations are plain wrong, so I can't see 'English' voices being any better trying to pronounce foreign street/road names.

G300PBV · Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2011 11:58 pm Post subject:

My 3790 can't even pronounce basic stuff properly. There is a road near me called Poolstock, which it pronounces as Poolstuck. Can't wait to drive to Stuckport in South Manchester.

Redeye · Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 7:40 am Post subject:

MaFt · Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 12:04 pm Post subject:

the french voice file will be coded to work in french with french pronunciations and phrases etc. so if you use the french one it will work correctly.

the english voice file will be coded to work in english with english pronunciations and phrases. using it on non-english words will simply confuse it.

the only way around it would be to program each voice file to understand all the other languages pronunciations and phrases. the files would be huge!

to be honest, i can't see any companies making the voice files work this way.

MaFt

Wazza_G · Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 10:26 pm Post subject:

Try Folkestone or should I say Folk es tun! Rolling Eyes

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Meter_Man · Lifetime Member Joined: Mar 10, 2008 Posts: 43

Try some of the roads in Spain, might have been Majorca where road numbers begin with MA - Garmin told us we were in Massachusets!
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MaFt · Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2011 10:16 am Post subject:

We have a computer shop fairly local to us called CCL Computers. I saved it as a favourite on an old Nuvi 360 and the default is to capitalise the first letter only: Ccl Computers. I changed this to be CCL Computers.

On arrival it told me that I had arrived at "250 Computers". The Garmin had read 'CCL' as roman numerals!

MaFt

sussamb · Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2011 10:41 am Post subject:

Smarter than we thought then Laughing

M8TJT · Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2011 10:42 am Post subject:

Anushka · Occasional Visitor Joined: Aug 29, 2012 Posts: 2

We were highly entertained on holiday in France by the Garmin lady's pronunciation of place-names (fortunately I can understand what the legend at the top is telling us, so we found our way). The best was in Rouen when we were instructed to turn right at mefti-nepty-popticlock*. I think I shall ask for a French-speaking voice next time.
We're going to Greece next month - but shan't bother to switch it over as I don't understand Greek anyway.

* any ideas as to what that might mean?

Andy_P · Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2012 3:25 pm Post subject:

I think this will always be a problem for the non-foreign language speaker.

You either stick with your normal English voice on the sat-nav where it will understandably fall over on foreign words and names, or you opt for a voice in the local language, in which case it has all the extra info to pronounce place names correctly, but you cannot understand the navigation instructions!
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Anushka · Occasional Visitor Joined: Aug 29, 2012 Posts: 2

How can I get a local language voice when I am travelling? Is this something I can do on the Garmin itself or do I need to download something?

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