Using SSML on the console - Amazon Polly

Using SSML on the console

In the following example, you use an SSML tag to tell Amazon Polly to substitute "World Wide Web Consortium" for "W3C" when it speaks a short paragraph. You also use tags to introduce a pause and whisper a word. Compare the results of this exercise with that of Applying lexicons (Synthesizing Speech) .

For more information on SSML, with examples, see Supported SSML tags.

To synthesize speech from SSML-enhanced text (console)

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon Polly console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/polly/.

  2. If it isn't already displayed, choose the Text-to-Speech tab.

  3. Turn on SSML.

  4. Type or paste the following text in the text box: 

    <speak>
     He was caught up in the game.<break time="1s"/> In the middle of the 
     10/3/2014 <sub alias="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</sub> meeting, 
     he shouted, "Nice job!" quite loudly. When his boss stared at him, he repeated 
     <amazon:effect name="whispered">"Nice job,"</amazon:effect> in a 
     whisper.
</speak>

    The SSML tags tell Amazon Polly how to render the text:

    • <break time="1s"/> tells Amazon Polly to pause 1 second between the first two sentences.

    • <sub alias="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</sub> tells Amazon Polly to substitute World Wide Web Consortium for the acronym W3C.

    • <amazon:effect name="whispered">Nice job</amazon:effect> tells Amazon Polly to whisper the second instance of "Nice job." .

      Note

      When you use the AWS CLI, you enclose the input text in quotation marks to differentiate it from the surrounding code. The Amazon Polly console doesn't show you code, so you don't enclose input text in quotation marks when you use it.

  5. For Language, choose English, US, then choose a voice.

  6. To listen to the speech, choose Listen.

  7. To save the speech file, choose Download. If you want to save it in a different format, expand Additional settings, turn on Speech file format settings and choose the format that you want, then choose Download.