Guide
Arabic tashkeel for text to speech, explained
What is tashkeel?
Tashkeel (التشكيل) is the set of diacritics that mark the short vowels and other sounds in Arabic writing: fatha, damma and kasra for the short vowels, sukun for the absence of a vowel, shadda for a doubled consonant, and tanween for the -an, -un and -in endings.
Most Arabic text, from news articles to marketing copy, is written without them. Fluent readers restore the vowels from context without thinking. A text to speech voice has to do the same, and for most words it succeeds. The trouble starts with words that have several valid readings.
When do you need to add diacritics?
You rarely need to vowel every word. Add diacritics where a word can be read in more than one way and the context doesn't settle it, such as ملك (king, angel or kingdom) or علم (knew, taught, knowledge or flag), and to rare or classical words, verse and names.
In Vocla you can do both: add tashkeel to the whole script in one click and review the result, or fix a single word with the word inspector. If you want every generation vowelled without touching your text, turn on Auto-tashkeel.
Names, brands and acronyms
Tashkeel can't fix a brand written in Latin letters or an acronym such as KSA. For those, write the spelling you want the voice to read, such as فُوكْلا for Vocla or كيه إس إيه for KSA, in your pronunciation dictionary. The script keeps your original wording, and every voice in the workspace reads the entry your way.