Nuance Debuts New German Text-To-Speech Voice For Auto and Navigation Platforms

Nuance Vocalizer™ Now Features ‘Anna’, A New German Female Voice That Sounds Amazingly Natural and is a True European Speaking Four Additional Languages

BERLIN, Navigation and Location Summit, Europe, June 15th, 2010 —Nuance Communications, Inc, a leading supplier of speech solutions, today introduced the new German text-to-speech (TTS) voice ‘Anna’, the latest voice addition to the company’s renowned Nuance Vocalizer 5 TTS family. The new natural, multilingual and accent-free German computer-generated voice delivers spoken output for automotive and navigation solutions as well as for other consumer electronics such as voice read back in e-book readers. ‘Anna’ is immediately available for automotive and consumer applications and will be released for use in network environments later this year.

The new German voice is specifically designed and optimized for automotive and navigation environments to deliver more natural spoken output for turn-by-turn directions, infotainment, incoming text messages and online information, such as traffic alerts and point of interest (POI) details. To ensure the new voice was of the highest quality and would be embraced by customers, Nuance worked closely with key partners in the German automotive industry to select Heike Hagen, a well-known professional speaker, out of more than 100 candidates for the new voice.

The new voice profile leverages thousands of words and phrases spoken by the voice talent to ensure all possible combinations of sounds were pitch-perfect and deliver spoken output that is consistent, accurate and pleasant to the ear. To achieve this, Nuance paid particular attention to the pronunciation of city and street names, music titles and artist names etc. to ensure the highest voice quality for use in premium navigation and infotainment systems.

In addition to German language support, ‘Anna’ also features fluent speech output for English, French, Italian and Spanish - a must-have attribute for the multi-lingual European market. As a result a German driver navigating in France will have the French city and street names announced in proper French while also Italian music titles on the MP3 player are spoken without accent and the name of his English colleague who left a voice message is read out without error, all with the same unique voice.

“Nuance has long been committed to innovating and delivering best-of-breed speech solutions for our customers. Working closely with our automotive partners we are again delivering on this promise with what we consider is the highest quality voice on the market today, ‘Anna’,” said Arnd Weil, general manager, Nuance Automotive. “We are very proud of this breakthrough performance and thrilled by the positive feedback we are receiving from our customers.”

Nuance Vocalizer spoken output solutions today support more than 40 languages across 54 different voices, including North American and Western European languages as well as Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Arabic, Turkish. The portfolio also includes broad support for Asia region languages including; Hindi, Indian English, Australian English, Indonesian, Thai, Chinese, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Japanese and Korean.

For more information please visit www.nuance.com.

Nuance is exhibiting at the Navigation and Location Summit in Berlin and will also speak on the 16th of June on Strategies to Use Speech as a New Service Enabler. For more information please visit: http://www.thewherebusiness.com/navigationeurope/.

About Nuance Communications, Inc.

Nuance is the leading supplier of speech and imaging solutions for business and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications, and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share, and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.