Category: Let's talk
Hello everyone,
I am getting more serious about my voice acting, even if it is just for fun. I've already done several short projects where I voiced all the characters and did the narration. I'm not half bad, but I want to be better, so much better. To that end, One of the biggest musts for voice acting is the ability to read well out loud. My usual way of doing things is to use JAWS and read by line or sentence, then hear the line and speak what I hear using my character or narration voice. If I do a find/replace and replace all commas with periods in the script, it allows me to do it even better. The final result sounds decent, but a half hour project can sometimes take me four or more hours. I've also tried using a braille display before. While I can read Braille okay in my head, reading it out loud is more stilted than I would like. I actually find doing this easier with a sscreen reader than braille, surprisingly. I am wondering if there are any compitent readers out there who read via braille or speech that might have a few pointers. Obviously practice is key of course. I know blind people can read out loud well, I have two totally blind friends who have both narrated audio books quite adeptly. I've done a few google searches, but all I get are articles about how this or that device will change the game for blind readers. Not helpful!
Thank you very much.
When I had to read out loud, I preferred braille.
I'd read the content first, so that way I could add lib without stumbling.
A screen reader and repeating it, no.
I'd get lazy, change the voice, and let it just do it.
Laughing.
I've found that a lot of blind people have trouble reading outloud because
their form is poor. Some read only using two fingers, or even one finger. You
should use six fingers. It allows you to read faster, and see the entire word,
which allows you to read more clearly. So, maybe that's part of your problem.
I've always been unable to feel braille with anything other than my index fingers.
I read braille using 2 hands and mostly read with my left hand. I am right handed. I use many fingers sometimes to not just read but also guide and such.
I am great with reading things out loud using jaws. I will read it word for word a lot if not as it is reading line by line. Word for word is best.
Same here. Never been able to read with anything but index fingers.
I never learned anything beyond the index fingers. Cody your advice sounds helpful, though I imagine it would take a long time to train my fingers to recognize the dots. I can read well with my index, but with each successive finger my sensitivity decreases. I suppose I could start reading exclusively with each until I develop sensitivity? Hah, will my body even do that now I'm so old?:) When you say six fingers are you making a joke or are you referring to the whole beginning to read with the left hand technique? I've been trying to do that, though I've found so far that having to press the button on my display to scroll it makes reading a little stilted anyway. I usually read with my right, then reverse the panning buttons and pan forward with the left. I don'ty find my braille display (Brailliant BI 40) reads all that well. In Word it starts on cell 6. I have it reading by line at fixed incriments. So I'll be reading the braille line, but then when I scroll and reach the next line in the actual document, I might only get a word on the next braille display scroll. So I read a full braille line, scroll, then get a word or two, scroll. It's really stilted. I wonder if I have it set wrong, though I haven't had much luck with settings improving things.
And when I read with a display I find that I have to speed up or slow down the auto scroll at random times.
Hmmmm. I guess I was always trained to read with four to six fingers. My index fingers do the primary reading, but Cody's right, the other fingers help pick up and process words, guide, and so on. When using my Braille display, having more fingers on the display allows me to push the panning button without having to take my hands off what I'm reading or lose my place. I'd love to know more about blind people narrating audio books! I've always wanted to do that, but generally if a book is already available in alternative format, it would seem like it needed to be narrated. I have done a lot of reading aloud to friends, or often now to my husband. I honestly can't read aloud using speech for crap. I can do it, but not smoothly. Knew a guy once who could read aloud from speech as good as any sighted person reading print, or the blind ones I know who are proficient in Braille.
The key to reading with multiple fingers is not in using all six fingers to read
simultaneously, but in having a task for each finger. So my right ring finger
guides me and keeps my right hand on the same line as my left. My right
middle finger begins the reading, notes spaces and breaks, the general shape of
the word. My two index fingers read the word for the most part. My left middle
checks the work of the two index fingers in case they got something wrong. My
left ring finger guides my left hand so it stays on the same line. Then I split
read, which also allows me to read faster and more smoothly.
Split reading, for those who don't know, is a practice wherein your right hand
reaches the end of the line first, then drops down to find the beginning of the
next line while your left hand finishes reading the first line. That way, the
moment you're left hand is finished, your right hand can take over, and there's
no break as you try to find the next line. it allows you to smoothly and
seamlessly transition from line to line and even page to page.
I'd need someone to show me in person.
That I can't really help with, sory.
I'm not sure if I do the split-reading thing, but I read with multiple fingers and have personally never had a problem reading braille or reading aloud. But I also don't use a braille display either. I find that as I'm reaching the end of a line with my right hand, my left is going to the start of the next line down and my right is joining it. Primary reading fingers are index for me, but other fingers guide and pick up on word shapes.
I sort of reach the end of the line with the right, then it tracks the next line while the left hand finishes the reading
I don't think about the other fingers, but will give that a go.
My left hand goes on to the next line while my right hand finishes up the previous one.
This is for reading out loud with speech.
My method depends on punctuation and manipulating how JAWS reads sentence to sentence, and within a sentence. In other words, I make JAWS read to me the way I read.
As you know, punctuation helps with fluency - it lets the reader know where to stop, pause, slow down and begin. If it is a speech or a passage I myself have not written, I dedicate time to learn the author’s overall tone and message so I can express everything accurately. then I split up the sentences into smaller chunks. I guess everybody does this when reading correctly, we break up words into meaningful units that we can grasp quickly.
But what I mean is I edit the text by replacing all punctuation marks with periods. Leaving end marks like question marks and exclamation marks is okay because they stop JAWS in the same way periods stop JAWS. As you’ve probably noticed, JAWS doesn’t completely stop at commas, semicolons and colons. As a result, you can become distracted by JAWS when trying to hear yourself speak. This makes lengthy sentences shorter, or just converts them into broken up phrases (short sentences can be left alone). I turn paragraphs or quotations into lists of different size by breaking them up into smaller chunks. Each phrase or chunk takes up a short single line.
What you’re basically doing is controlling JAWS so that it feeds you information at a pace and size that you are accustomed to taking in. This strategy makes JAWS less of a distraction. I try to make it so that JAWS is taking turns with me to speak. But sometimes I can move on to the next line halfway through speaking a line.
Rather than use the word by word or sentence by sentence commands, I only need to use down arrow. Alt + down arrow and control + down arrow help me out kinesthetically depending on how much concentration the moment demands and if I want to add something I’ve just recalled. I adjust the speed rate as well using control + alt + page up/down.
I can do this on the Braille Note as well. I haven’t had to use other devices and screen-readers so unfortunately I don’t know how well my method would work there.
I don't think it would work very well with other screen readers that don't allow you to read by sentence. I do the exact same thing you do with JAWS and it definetly helps a lot. That's always assuming you have an editable document. otherwise you just have to hope the writer didn't use a whole lot of long sentences. That's really my concern and why I'm hoping to find a way to read better. Assuming I ever do get a professional voice acting Gig, I have to hope they'd be willing to give me an electronic version. if they do, I'd need it to be editable. Luckily dialogue is generally easier to perform than narration.
sounds like a science, cody I think your name is. Yeah, I've never been able to
read with more than just my index fingers either. They tried teaching me,
obviously it failed! Many things did though. My lack of taking a lot of things I
didn't find interesting seriously at all! I just haven't learnt the knack of it, Maybe
it's too late now, who knows. sometimes I try it, it just never works.