Hong Kong Speech Festival - Solo Verse Tips and Advice
The Hong Kong Speech Festival (English speech) is upon us again and that means a lot of students are preparing for their solo verses. As usual, the poems require the students to immerse themselves in the poet’s words and showcase their ability to convey emotions in order to score high marks. And as always, this is the most difficult part for any participant in these competitions. Students will definitely need speech festival training and practice
Most schools will provide some basic guidance on what students need to do. Teachers will probably go over procedures, the format and provide simple training. Unfortunately, teachers usually can’t help each individual student and that’s why parents often look for speech festival training help on their own. Here we’ll talk about a few tips to help your children improve.
- Students need to memorize the entire poem and be able to say each word correctly. If there are any mistakes, points will be deducted. For example, if the poem writes “the snake in the grass” and the student says “a snake in the grass”, they’ll lose marks for this error.
- Building on saying each word correctly, students also need to be sure they enunciate well. This means that each word should be said clearly and each syllable is audible. Students should practice saying the multi-syllable words in the poem with specific emphasis on saying the ends of the words. Special attention on hard sounds in English, like “t” and “ck”, should be recognized. The organization still emphasizes British pronunciation, so if you can, try to have them practice with this in mind.
- The theme or central idea of the poem should be understood by the student. If they don’t understand what the poem is about, they probably can’t relay it to the audience. For example, if the poem is somber, and the student recites it in a happy way, it shows that they didn’t understand the poem very well.
- The student needs to understand every word in the poem. They need to understand how it’s used to convey the poet’s ideas and feelings. If they don’t understand the words, they won’t know if they need to emphasize it. Sometimes poets play with words in order to create a new feeling or idea and students need to be able to recognise this.
- Volume, syllable stress and timing play a huge role in getting the overall tone of the poem down. Knowing when to slow down, pause, get louder and then focus on certain parts of words give the dramatic effect that leads to high marks.
- Emotions seen through the face and heard through the voice are usually what determines if the student will score high or not (if they do the previous tips well). The student really needs to “dive into” the poem. For example, this year the P3 boys solo verse is “Elephant Walking” by Clive Sansom. In this poem, the speaker is an elephant in search of water. How do you convey the emotions of an elephant? You have to teach the student that the poet is attaching his human emotions onto the elephants in the poem. If the poet or an elephant sees a tiger, wouldn’t they both feel scared? Students have to show the emotions/feelings of the poem accurately and correctly in order to get high marks.
These tips should help students who are preparing for their poems by giving them more focus on what they need to improve on. In most cases, students need to work on all of the focus points above so it truly is a lot of work. There are a few resources online, but a lot of useful ones can be found on youtube . Just type in the name of the poem on the list and you’ll be able to hear and get some analysis on the poems.
We’re also here to help students. Please contact us if you want specialized Speech Festival Training and Practice from one of our qualified tutors. Good luck and practice hard!
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Speech Festival Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between the open and non-open competition.
Many parents ask us this question.
This is for native speakers (English as a first language). The adjudicators have high standards. However, for children who are younger than P1 or for older children who want more practice and exposure, it is still well worth entering.
PLEASE CHECK WITH THE SCHOOL VERY CAREFULLY AS THERE HAVE BEEN CHANGES IN THE RULES WHICH COULD RESULT IN DISQUALIFICATION.
This is for non-native speakers usually attending mainstream (local) schools. In the rules, it states that students who violate this rule will have marks deducted but it is difficult really for adjudicators to know and many children are bi-lingual with both languages at native standard.
What is the difference between prose reading and prose speaking?
Prose Speaking
The piece must be memorised fully.
Prose Reading
The piece MUST NOT be memorised (marks will be deducted otherwise).
The student MUST hold the book.
An extract from the book will be chosen by the adjudicator (usually different for each student).
There is no need to quote the name of the book and author unless the adjudicator states it is needed.
Should my child do actions?
We do not recommend actions. Most adjudicators deduct marks for unnatural movements. The poem should be performed through VOICE and FACIAL EXPRESSION with natural body movements. When actions are forced, it is not truly felt. However, there are a few adjudicators who like actions.
Teachers with little experience of the requirements generally teach children actions and we 'unteach' them.
Is it necessary to bow?
It is not a requirement. However, most students do so in which case it should be quick but polite (adjudicators get bored).
What is suggested is brief eye to eye contact with the adjudicator and a GENUINE smile before starting (once started the student should look at the whole audience not the adjudicator).
How can I enter my child for the Speech Festival?
Some schools select students to represent the school.
Some schools offer entry for all students.
If your child is not selected or the school does not offer enrolment, please contact us and we will explain how you can still enroll your child.
How do I choose the right poem for my child?
Do not choose the shortest one because it is short. These tend to be more technically difficult.
Let your child try the poems.
We have a poem selection service which you can find here if you want to find the best match for your child's personality/voice.
My child was not selected by his or her school. Can he or she still enter?
Yes. See above.
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INTERNATIONAL SPEECH
Harmony tree, welcome to the htisf journey.
Harmony Tree International Speech Festival (HTISF) is a Drama & Speech competition hosted by HT Canada. This annual event aims to provide a valuable out-of-classroom experience for students aged 4-18 across Asia through poetry, literature, public speaking and theatre. HTISF is more than just a competition. It is an inspiring journey that students continue to grow and flourish. Its qualifications, recognized by top-class institutions worldwide, foster a global perspective for students and provide a significant platform for them to learn and shine.
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Guidelines & Pieces
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- No hand props or costumes.
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- Only one set piece provided per age group.
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- Choose one from the two set topics.
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- The chosen topic has to be announced.
- Speech exceeding time limit will be cut short. Cue cards optional.
- Choose one from the two set pieces.
- The title, author of the piece and character played have to be announced.
- Performance shall not exceed the time limit.
- Blocking shall be designed and developed.
- Simple set (ie 1 table, 2 chairs) allowed. Bulky items shall be avoided.
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- Both contestants must perform in the same space simultaneously.
- The piece can be chosen based on interest & ability, regardless of gender.
- The title, author and each character played have to be announced.
Rules & FAQs
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An open letter to Sarah Friedland, the Jewish director who condemned Israel
Jewish-american director sarah friedland dedicated her victory speech at the venice film festival to protest israel's 'genocide' in gaza; it's too bad she neglects to mention the actual facts as she focuses on being hip and happening.
Festival Text-to-Speech Online Demo
Select a Voice | Type the text to synthesise (max 70 chars) | |
--> |
Synthetic speech can be used anywhere pre-recorded speech can, for example telephone call routing and information lines. However, it is equally useful where pre-recorded speech cannot be used. For example, screen-readers for the visually impaired, email/sms reading over the telephone, voice directions for in-car satellite navigation and gaming dialog to name but a few.
Further questions...
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speech-dispatcher voice configuration problems with festival
I finally got Festival working with the US HTS voices: cmu_us_awb_cg , cmu_us_jmk_cg , cmu_us_slt_cg , cmu_us_bdl_cg , cmu_us_clb_cg , cmu_us_rms_cg .
I manually configured festival.scm to use bdl voice:
It's now working fine both from within interactive festival and when server is running ( festival --server ):
I then configured speech-dispatcher, it failed to properly configure itself via spd-conf , but I manually fixed the configuration file speechd . To sum it up:
Now ALSA test is working fine (producing sound). However, when I send a text to speech-dispatcher :
...the festival server goes crazy, like it was unsuccessfully trying each and every voice it can think of:
So, festival is working, connection to ALSA is working, speech-dispatcher is sending something to the festival, but it's somehow broken, possibly wrong voice settings.
There is also a configuration file for festival module within /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/ folder, festival.conf , but it's virtually empty (with a lot of commented text) and it does not mention anything about voices set by speech-dispatcher when calling the Festival . It's a place I would assume one can set that, especially because a comment in speechd.conf :
The DefaultVoiceType controls which voice type should be used by default. Voice types are symbolic names which map to particular voices provided by the synthesizer according to the output module configuration. Please see the synthesizer-specific configuration in etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/ to see which voices are assigned to different symbolic names. The following symbolic names are currently supported: MALE1, MALE2, MALE3, FEMALE1, FEMALE2, FEMALE3, CHILD_MALE, CHILD_FEMALE # DefaultVoiceType "MALE1"
I also tried to increase heap size up to 50M (as per some posts in other discussions), but it doesn't help:
I get the same strange errors. Any suggestions appreciated.
- text-to-speech
- speech-dispatcher
2 Answers 2
To solve this issue need to define (proclaim_voice in scm file. please refer below steps:
- go to festival/voices folder
- open: vim us/cmu_us_clb_arctic_clunits/festvox/cmu_us_clb_arctic_clunits.scm #<--voice clunits.scm
- Go to bottom of file add line before (provide 'cmu_us_clb_arctic_clunits)
- Add below content (update language, gender, dialect as needed). Update, save and quit. (proclaim_voice 'cmu_us_clb_arctic_clunits '((language english) (gender female) (dialect american) (description "This voice provides an American English male voice using a residual excited LPC diphone synthesis method. It uses the CMU Lexicon pronunciations. Prosodic phrasing is provided by a statistically trained model using part of speech and local distribution of breaks. Intonation is provided by a CART tree predicting ToBI accents and an F0 contour generated from a model trained from natural speech. The duration model is also trained from data using a CART tree.")))
- After /usr/bin/festival --server the error should be gone
You could also run spd-say -L to show the details.
If need to update default festival voice:
- Edit /etc/festival.scm to add (set! voice_default 'voice_<You prefered Voice name>)
- restart festival server or reboot ubuntu. The default voice will be changed to new one via spd-say command or from Firefox.
- Thank you Heng, looks like a solution, I'll test (within a week or so) it and report back. I was recently working with a different component that did not have a TTS solution for Linux, so we agreed with the devolper that I'd write a little "speech-dispatcher" for MaryTTS. I did that, but the developer seem to cease working on the project... Anyhow, I'll try to follow your steps to make the original component work with spd and Festival as you suggested. – Oak_3260548 Commented Mar 12, 2021 at 11:25
- /etc/festival.scm this file doesn't exist on manjaro – chovy Commented Nov 12, 2021 at 4:35
- what is <You preferred voice name> ? I have no idea what to put there. Can you please give examples for English? – chovy Commented Nov 12, 2021 at 4:38
The problem could be because speech-dispatcher is not accepting festival's default voice, instead, it tries to use its own settings.
Try uncommenting and changing the DefaultVoiceType to something like:
DefaultVoiceType "FEMALE1"
I'd also do some testing using different programs, like Firefox's reader mode (ALT+CTRL+R) and see if you get any of the listed voices working.
- Thank you for your suggestion, I'll have a look at it once again and report back. – Oak_3260548 Commented Nov 13, 2020 at 15:30
- what file do you add this to? – chovy Commented Nov 12, 2021 at 4:37
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Speech Dispatcher not working after changing voice to Festival
I followed these instructions for how to change the default voice for spd-say from espeak to festival hoping that would allow me to use festival in Chrome with a text-to-speech extension I have installed. At first, the spd-say command would work fine, but the voice was barely understandable. But after going through the above instructions, I can't get spd-say to work.
echo "testing festival" | festival --tts works, and so does espeak "testing espeak" , but spd-say "testing festival" gives me the following error:
What's causing this error? I've checked both files that the above instructions said I needed to modify, and I can't see anything wrong with them. In addition, I've uninstalled and reinstalled speech dispatcher so that the command would successfully use the espeak voice and then went through the instructions again, but I got the same result.
- text-to-speech
- I find the link below. Install speech-dispatcher-festival package worked for me. groups.google.com/g/vinux-support/c/VHppxTrBwZM?pli=1 – user1145298 Commented Nov 6, 2020 at 5:09
2 Answers 2
Have you tried looking into the logfiles written by speech-dispatcher? You should be able to find them under /run/user/1000/speech-dispatcher/log/ .
I ran into a very similar issue. In my case, I had espeak disabled and festival enabled and got the following error in /run/user/1000/speech-dispatcher/log/speech-dispatcher.log :
I noticed that I in fact did not have festival running, which I fixed by running systemctl enable festival and systemctl start festival .
Edit: Although I didn't get it to work with Firefox either, I found that flite is a way more stable and performant alternative to festival while still getting comparable audio quality.
Unfortunately, I have not encounter the exact same problem you are describing myself, but I created a new TTS utility which help you as well. It works offline, for free with AI-based high-quality voice. You can you it everywhere: Firefox browser, PDF reader, chrome, LibreOffice, etc.
Feel free to have a look, I just created a video tutorial with installation steps and DEMO: https://youtu.be/hb1ZVwUcPCU
Download link and Project page: https://github.com/MattePalte/Verbify-TTS
Feel free to leave comment/open issue to discuss new ideas, problems or constructive criticism.
Hoping it will help you.
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Billy McFarland reveals date and location for Fyre Festival II
Fyre Festival II has an official date and location.
Billy McFarland, the founder of the original 2017 music festival that was shrouded in controversy, sat down for an interview with NBC News’ Savannah Sellers on TODAY Sept. 9 show to reveal exclusive details about Fyre Festival II .
“Fyre Festival II is happening April 25, 2025, so we’re seven and a half months away,” he said. “We have a private island off the coast of Mexico in the Caribbean, and we have an incredible production company who’s handling everything from soup to nuts.”
He said the festival will run for three days until April 28, 2025. He couldn’t confirm the name of the island just yet, but said the plan is to lean on existing infrastructure for lodging, eateries and restrooms. The aforementioned production company, the name of which he didn’t indicate, will handle logistics.
He added, “But we are developing and building out the private island for the actual festival festivities.”
The initial Fyre Festival in April 2017, which promised a luxury experience on a private island in the Bahamas with top entertainment, took a disastrous turn and went viral online when attendees who paid thousands for tickets ended up with no concert, sleeping in tents and eating cheese sandwiches in takeout boxes.
In March 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges involving the event. He then pleaded guilty in July 2018 to separate fraud charges related to another ticket-selling scam, NBC News reported . He was sentenced in October 2018 to six years in prison. He served about four years before he was released early in May 2022.
More than a year after his release, in August 2023, he resurfaced to announce on Instagram that Fyre Festival II was on the way.
In his interview with Sellers, McFarland said he is still in the planning stages of booking acts.
“We haven’t booked any talent for Fyre II,” he said. “It’s not going to be just music — for example, karate combat. We’re in talks with them to set up a pit to have, like, live fights at Fyre Festival II.”
Asked how McFarland would pitch artists following the failure of the first Fyre Festival, he said he and organizers have “the chance to embrace the storm.”
“Since 2016 Fyre has been the most talked about music festival in the world,” he said. “Obviously, a lot of that has been negative, but I think that most people, once they kind of get under the hood and study the plans and see the team behind Fyre II, they see the upside. We have the chance to embrace this storm and really steer our ship into all the chaos that has happened. And if it’s done well, I think Fyre has a chance to be this annual festival that really takes over the festival industry.”
It won’t be cheap to go to Fyre Festival II, either. McFarland said he already sold 100 tickets for $500 a piece, and other packages will soon go on sale ranging from $1,400 to $1.1 million.”
So what, exactly, will attendees get with a $1.1 million ticket?
“You will be on a boat, have the luxury yachts that we partner with who will be docked and parked outside the island,” he said. “But once again, Fyre is not just about this, like, luxury experience. It’s about the adventure. So you’ll be scuba diving with me. You’ll be bouncing around to other islands and other countries on small planes.”
As for convincing others let down by the first festival to return, McFarland said he has a plan for that, too.
“It’s hard because this is the deeper issue, where there are people who were legitimately hurt and let down from Fyre I, whether that was an employee and a family of a member of an employee, a ticket holder,” he said. “So there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to repay those people. I don’t think it’s practical. I don’t actually think it’s right to try to do all that in the first year. I think that would lead to short term decisions. So we were trying to find small ways to give back to everybody that was hurt along the way.”
Although he is looking to revamp the festival and the brand this time, one thing will remain: the cheese sandwiches. The meal in the styrofoam box that went viral in 2017 will get a twist for Fyre Festival II.
“We will have cheese sandwiches,” he said. “They’re going to be super expensive, too. We’re going to make them, like, really good. That’ll be, like, the highest priced food item, I think.”
Ariana Brockington is a trending news reporter at TODAY digital. She is based in Los Angeles.
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Festival audio device problems. No sound output
I currently have festival 2.4 installed and configured.
Heres what I'm doing:
I first use ./bin/festival to get into the festival prompt. Then do (SayText "test") which should have the tts speak the word test
Now when I have festival 2.1 installed using apt-get from the repository this command works as expected, it says "test" However when running from manually-built festival 2.4 it reports no error, but also no sound. I have used set parameter commands and tried every audio method, also tried the set parameter command with Audio_Device and tried many of the devices from /dev/ and /dev/snd/ on my system to no avail.
Note that oss-compat is installed, I saw that listed as a solution somewhere and it was already installed from when I built cmu sphinx a while back.
My question is what is apt-get doing that I'm not. I've been at this for about 12 hours now so any ideas are welcome.
Update : I have used strace to monitor the calls festival is making to the system in an attempt to find out whats causing this, heres what I've come up with:
My system has multiple audio deivces connected to it, the integrated audio on the motherboard which is fried, the hdmi outputs of the nvidia card, and a usb audio device I'm using for the time being. ls /dev/ shows three audio devices, as expected /dev/audio , /dev/audio2 , and /dev/audio3 . Setting festival to use the first two with (Parameter.set 'Audio_Device "/dev/audio") did the same thing as before, no error but also no sound. However when using the third device /dev/audio3 I get Linux: can't open /dev/audio3 upon further investigation with aforementioned strace I discovered this:
open("/dev/audio3", O_WRONLY) = -1 EBUSY (Device or resource busy)
I searched around a bit and the only mentions of this error I can find are for specialized cases for whatever the person in question was doing.
- text-to-speech
2 Answers 2
You simply need to configure Pulseaudio. Add these lines to the end of your ~/.festivalrc file, or to /usr/share/festival/festival.scm :
- Yes I did this after you commented earlier, works like a charm! – HalfLife420 Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 0:14
- In case you have multiple sound sinks (like an HDMI output) and fail to get sound, just add --device=0 or --device=1 to the last command. ex: (Parameter.set 'Audio_Command "paplay --device=0 $FILE --client-name=Festival --stream-name=Speech") Use "pacmd list-sinks" to identify the appropriate sink. – KIAaze Commented Apr 14, 2018 at 21:06
- It just makes a weird hissing sound now, although it does come from the proper output. – Haggra Commented Nov 25, 2020 at 19:27
I found the solution to the problem. Armed with the information from strace It was only a matter of tracking down what was blocking my access to my audio devices.
fuser -fv /dev/snd/* /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* will effectively show you anything accessing any audio device on your system. It showed that pulseaudio was accessing /dev/snd/control**** , not audio3 but still worth a try. Then I ran pulseaudio -k to kill pulseaudio. After that I can hear festival.
- 1 The proper solution is to configure Festival to use pulseaudio instead wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Festival – Nikolay Shmyrev Commented Mar 5, 2017 at 21:16
- @NikolayShmyrev If only you had told me that many hours ago ha ha. Now it works much better and I don't have to close other applications to make it work. Thank you very much Nikolay! – HalfLife420 Commented Mar 5, 2017 at 22:17
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IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
75th Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival (2023) (English ...
The Association has decided to put the following arrangements in place for this year's Speech Festival (2024): All Solo / Duo / Group Classes would be held. Competitions would be held in "Mixed Mode". Majority of the classes would remain in "Live Competition Mode (LCM)", with only some solo classes running in "Video Submission Mode ...
Follow Teacher Ham online:https://www.youtube.com/c/TeacherHamHello folks. Well, it's that time of the year again! Almost...74th Hong Kong Schools Speech Fes...
Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival
The Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival is one of Hong Kong 's largest inter-school competitions, and is organized by the Hong Kong Schools Music and Speech Association. [1] Primary and secondary school students across Hong Kong deliver speeches in English and Chinese. The festival has been running for the past 65 years. [2]
Participation in the Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival is not merely about winning a trophy. It's about personal growth, development, and the joy of expressing oneself. The festival: ... The festival is open to all schools in Hong Kong, including primary, secondary, and special schools. Participants must adhere to specific rules and guidelines ...
The Hong Kong Speech Festival (English speech) is upon us again and that means a lot of students are preparing for their solo verses. As usual, the poems require the students to immerse themselves in the poet's words and showcase their ability to convey emotions in order to score high marks. And as always, this is the most difficult part for ...
Prose Speaking. The piece must be memorised fully. Prose Reading. The piece MUST NOT be memorised (marks will be deducted otherwise). The student MUST hold the book. An extract from the book will be chosen by the adjudicator (usually different for each student). There is no need to quote the name of the book and author unless the adjudicator ...
WELCOME TOTHE HTISF JOURNEY. Harmony Tree International Speech Festival (HTISF) is a Drama & Speech competition hosted by HT Canada. This annual event aims to provide a valuable out-of-classroom experience for students aged 4-18 across Asia through poetry, literature, public speaking and theatre. HTISF is more than just a competition.
The Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival is one of Hong Kong's largest inter-school competitions and has been running for over sixty five years. The festival is organised by the Hong Kong Schools and Music Association (HKSMA).The festival is a prestigious and excitedly anticipated yearly event for most Hong Kong Schools.
Follow Teacher Ham online:https://www.youtube.com/user/englishtv123Hello folks. Well, it's that time of the year again! Almost...73rd Hong Kong Schools Speec...
The Festival Speech Synthesis System. Festival offers a general framework for building speech synthesis systems as well as including examples of various modules. As a whole it offers full text to speech through a number APIs: from shell level, though a Scheme command interpreter, as a C++ library, from Java, and an Emacs interface.
Home. 77th Hong Kong Schools Music Festival (2025): Syllabus Update. N465 Xylophone Solo - Primary School Name of Piece: Change from "Xylophone Concentration No 1″ to "Xylophone Concentration No 2″. Details of composer, publication name, publisher and competition requirements remain unchanged. Posting Date:5/9/2024.
Jewish-American director Sarah Friedland dedicated her victory speech at the Venice Film Festival to protest Israel's 'genocide' in Gaza; It's too bad she neglects to mention the actual facts as ...
Festival Text-to-Speech Online Demo. Select a Voice. Type the text to synthesise (max 70 chars) This is an interactive demo of CSTR's "Festival" speech synthesiser, which is software capable of making artificial speech in place of a real human. Festival is the most complete freeware multilingual, general-purpose synthesis system available.
There is also a configuration file for festival module within /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/ folder, festival.conf, but it's virtually empty (with a lot of commented text) and it does not mention anything about voices set by speech-dispatcher when calling the Festival.
I noticed that I in fact did not have festival running, which I fixed by running systemctl enable festival and systemctl start festival. Edit: Although I didn't get it to work with Firefox either, I found that flite is a way more stable and performant alternative to festival while still getting comparable audio quality.
McFarland said the festival will feature different stages and offer activities. In March 2018, McFarland pled guilty to wire fraud charges involving Fyre Festival in the Bahamas in April 2017.
Syllabus | Hong Kong Schools Music and Speech Association - HKSMSA ... Syllabus
Not just films and awards. The world of cinema often becomes a great platform for social denunciation, and even during this Venice Film Festival, there were those who wanted to use their visibility...
The 81st Venice International Film Festival witnessed Sarah Friedland's "Familiar Touch" win awards for Best Director, Best First Film, and Best Actress. During her acceptance speech for the Luigi de Laurentiis Prize, Friedland took the opportunity to make a political statement and voiced her support for Palestinians.
I first use ./bin/festival to get into the festival prompt. Then do (SayText "test") which should have the tts speak the word test. Now when I have festival 2.1 installed using apt-get from the repository this command works as expected, it says "test" However when running from manually-built festival 2.4 it reports no error, but also no sound.
HOwever, I did not get Festival working. The thing is > Festival shows fine via Gnome-Speech in Orca. But when I use > speech-dispatcher in Orca, only eSPeak is listed. Naturally trying to > switch to Festival in speechd-el says nothing, too. > You must start Festival as a server, in order to use it with SD. See below.
Home › Speech Festival › 76th Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival (2024) (English Speech) › Festival Timetable.