Shetland accents wanted

PEOPLE with Shetland accents are being asked to donate their voices to help the voiceless keep their local accent.

Researchers at Edinburgh University have teamed up with motor neurone disease research centre to collate a bank of voices from around Scotland.

Their ultimate aim is for people to be able to use a communication aid that more closely resembles their own voice.

Many people with conditions like motor neurone disease complain that the voices on these aids are too “impersonal”.

A new drive has been launched to encourage people from Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles to donate their voices to the bank.

Lynda Tomarelli, a research assistant at Edinburgh University’s Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic, said a number of voices with each regional accent would be meshed together and synthesised.

“For every synthetic voice that we build, we need a lot of recorded speech,” she said.

“Rather than getting one person to record for many hours, we take short recordings from many people to create an ‘accent template’.

“To create each accent template we need a minimum of 20 speakers, grouped together by age and gender.

“To create a personalised voice for an individual we then select the closest accent template and add their own short recording to it.”

Shetlanders wishing to contribute their voices are asked to visit the clinic at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary.

Recording sessions last for around one hour, with the person asked to read 300 to 400 sentences.

Tomarelli stressed that the scheme is purely a research project at the moment, with no service being offered to patients and no “end product” available yet in terms of a personalised communication aid.

But she feels the project could provide a massive boost to people with neurological diseases in the future.

“It’s something that has the ability to make a significantly positive impact on quality of life for patients,” Tomarelli said.

For further information on how to donate your voice, contact Phillipa Rewaj or Lynda Tomarelli at info@smart-mnd.org or 0131 465 9500.