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| A Korail subway train / Courtesy of Korail |
By Park Jae-hyuk
Korail's text-to-speech (TTS) system ― introduced this month on several trains on Seoul Metro Line 1 ― has been irritating passengers of all nationalities.
Koreans and foreigners have complained about the pronunciation and accent of the "virtual voice actress."
"The purpose of the announcement is to inform passengers about stations well, but it was hard to understand what it said," a Korean subway passenger said. "The weird voice was annoying me."
Foreign passengers say the English announcement is worse, as it pronounces "Jegi-dong" as "Jeji-dong" and emphasizes the second syllable of "Guro."
Despite the criticism, Korail plans to introduce the system to all its metropolitan subways by the end of next month. The national railway operator runs several trains on lines 1, 3 and 4, as well as the Gyeongui―Jungang Line and the Gyeongchun Line.
Korail has used the system on its shorter lines, such as the Gyeonggang Line, the Suin Line and a shuttle train between Gwangmyeong and Yeongdeungpo, since May. The new system also announces the station number.
The decision has been regarded as a measure to cut costs. But Korail said it adopted the system to get rid of the inefficiency of recording a human voice.
"It took a month to transplant a recorded voice into each train," a Korail official said. "We adopted the system to make emergency announcements in real time with TTS."
The official said her company is cooperating with the system supplier to improve pronunciation and accents.
In contrast to Korail, Seoul Metro has been using voice actors to record new announcements following its merger with Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit last year.
Seoul Metro said it will finish the recordings by the end of next month.
According to company, the Korean announcements have been recorded by voice actress Kang Hee-sun, who is well known for voicing Misae Nohara, the mother of Shin-chan in "Crayon Shin-chan."
Jennifer Clyde has been recording the English version, while Zhao Dongmei and Doi Miho are recording the Chinese and Japanese versions, respectively.
Passengers on Korail's subway trains said they miss the voices of Kang and Clyde.
Kang was the announcer for Korail trains since 2010. She has worked with Seoul Metro since 1996. Clyde has been an English announcer for Seoul metropolitan subways since 2004.
"Korail downgraded its service, while Seoul Metro is upgrading it," a passenger said.
