Open Source Pinyin Audio?

[gsaines]

I had a question for all the knowledgeable people on the board: is there a free or open source database of pinyin pronunciations? I'm building an online tool to help students learning Chinese with their character practice, and thought it would be awesome to include an audio component. (So for a new student, they can get practice not only writing meiguoren, but also hearing the pinyin being spoken.) The catch is of course that I just graduated from college and can't afford to license anything expensive. I would post a link, but the site is still too primitive for user feedback yet. (I don't want to show anything half baked.) Is there something pre-recorded like this out there or do other tools typically record their own?

Thanks a lot, and I'll be sure to post the link to the tool for feedback when it becomes more polished.

[felipealbertao]

ZDT (http://zdt.sourceforge.net/) has sound plug-ins that you might be able to use: http://zdt.sourceforge.net/main/sound_plugin/

I am not sure if the copyright would allow you to freely incorporate the sounds to your app, so you should talk to the author before using it.

[flameproof]

Why don't you just do your own?

Get a Mandarin native speaker (be careful, everybody claims to be a native speaker, few are)

Record the 1200 or so sounds that Mandarin has

Or if you know the sounds well just record them yourself (I would, but prefer a cute girls voice). And ready is the start to your license free pinyin sound database.

[ABCinChina]

You can try asking trevelyan nicely from this thread.

[davidj]

To be pedantic, you are dealing with performing rights on something that is not a computer program, so an appropriate Creative Commons licence would be more appropriate.

Chinese POD used creative commons licences for their audio, and I think they allowed derivatives, so you could cut and paste the sounds from their material! Their licence requires attribution, so make sure you give it, if you go that way, and make sure that you use material that is traceable to material that was published with that licence (they may subsequently have published it without that licence, even though unchanged).

Do check the actual licence, as I may be wrong about the Creative Commons variant they used.

[gsaines]

Thanks a lot for your input guys!

felipealbertao, I'm reading about the ztd sourceforge idea right now, maybe that will work. Thanks for the tip, I probably wouldn't have found it myself.

Davidj, I'll take a look at the Chinesepod material as well. If I end up using anyone's openly available work, I'll be sure to give them credit, even if a particular license doesn't require it. I figure giving credit to the authors is just common courtesy regardless of the legalese separating my use from the creator.

If none of these options proves serviceable I may just do my own as you suggested Flameproof. The number of pinyin pronunciation combos isn't so large as to be prohibitive, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't re-inventing the wheel. Finding a cute native speaker is a little tough in rural Ohio, but luckily I might know one or two candidates.

[cababunga]

There are sound packs for Mandarin and Cantonese here

http://www.chinese-lessons.com/download.htm

Quality is very good. For some reason the sounds are in stereo and the license prohibits you from modifying them, go figure. Other than that, it's very cool and free for non-commercial use.