#6 Speech becomes garbled when VoiceOver reads a specific passage using Japanese voices

This article was automatically translated. The original article was written in Japanese.

Overview

When the following passage is read aloud, the pronunciation becomes garbled and unintelligible. Because the pronunciation itself is corrupted, slowing down the speaking rate does not make it understandable.

11月に新車発表を控える｢ミツオカ｣企画から価格決定までクルマづくりを富山のファクトリーで見た

Steps to reproduce

Paste the passage above into any suitable text field. Then move VoiceOver focus to the passage to have it read aloud. I have attached recordings of the actual speech output for reference.

Affected voices:

Kyoko (Enhanced)
Otoya (Enhanced)

This issue is not limited to iOS. Reading the same passage on the latest version of macOS produces the same issue. This appears to be an issue with the speech synthesis system shared across Apple products.

Expected fix from Apple

The passage should be read aloud correctly.

Temporary workaround

This issue can be avoided by switching to another voice, such as the lower-quality standard version of Kyoko or Otoya. However, this is not a permanent solution. I hope Apple will fix it.