HowTo localize sipX voice prompts for different languages
From SIPfoundry sipXecs IP PBX, The Open Source SIP PBX for Linux - Calivia
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Available Language Packs
Starting with sipXecs release 3.10 a large number of language packs became available. These language packs can be easily installed from the administration Web interface. Several language packs can be installed simultaneously.
Language pack downloads: http://sipxecs.sipfoundry.org/pub/sipXecs/3.10/
File Format
All the sipX voice prompts are *.wav files. They are located in sipXpbx/src/wwwcontent/stdprompts.
The audio format we use is:
RIFF (little-endian) data, WAVE audio, Microsoft PCM, 16 bits, mono, 8000 Hz
Tips on how to record voice prompts
Localization
In order to do localization right, we have to consider that the grammatical structure and order of the target language is different from English. So, for instance, to pronounce "234", it may not suffice to string together 200.wav and 34.wav. Ideally, all of the sequencing and combining of audio fragments would be done in VXML files that we could examine and revise, but a considerable amount of the structure in the current system is done by VXML that is generated by CGIs written in C, which are harder to understand and change.
We would like to work with anyone interested to produce localized versions of sipX. Please initiate communication on our mailing list that can be found on the SIPfoundry site.
Additional documentation
Additional documentation is available on the SIPfoundry Web site at http://www.sipfoundry.org. You need to create an account on the site and login. Once logged in go to the Documentation section of the navigation and select "Presentations". There are currently three documents for download relevant to voice prompt localization:
- Localization_of_Voice_Apps.pdf
- AutoAttendant.pdf
- Voicemail.pdf
The total number of prompts to be translated are 487, where most of them are single words.
Also refer to http://track.sipfoundry.org/browse/XCF-1451 for an explanation about how different language packs can made to coexist in the system. As part of the 3.7/3.8 release cycle we are working on adding the necessary infrastructure to support this.
