License Issue about Google text-to-speech TTS

Question

I would like to record output from Googles text 2 speech engines and provide this as e.g. wav with my android application (reason see below). The application is closed source, commercial. Can somebody answer me if I am allowed doing this?I did not really found anything helpful in the licenses.

Reason:

I know it sound a little odd but at the end this is a better working approach in my case because:

• Sometimes tts is not installed
• Sometimes it is the wrong language
• Sometimes it is a crazy voice selected
• I like to tune the output a little
• And maybe some more challenges to fight with

Answer 1

I think the short answer to your question is: no.

1. Google TTS engine is not documented: even if there are ways to get the spoken text as an mp3 file (see https://gist.github.com/alotaiba/1728771), there is no document allowing you to do this; Google is also continuously changing the needed parameters.
2. Google Text-Translation services have documented APIs and are not free.

However, you can try the acapelabox service: for test it is free, the paid service explicitly allows commercial use (read the FAQ section).