VymovaPro software with built-in Ukrainian text-to-speech system and translation dictionary guides you in Ukrainian speech and language

To help reading Ukrainian text the software adds accentuation marks (stresses). For those who are not familiar with the Ukrainian alphabet, a phonetical text using English letters is available.

The powerful bi-directional Ukrainian-English-Ukrainian "smart" dictionary system is provided for your assistance!

You may input Ukrainian text using either Ukrainian or English letters. A special Transliteration command converts Ukrainian text between Ukrainian and English characters.

You may look at grammatic details (paradigm) for selected Ukrainian words!

Moreover, the software reads aloud any Ukrainian texts, even from websites! Text-to-MP3 converter is available to preserve the sound file from text read by the software.

English texts may be read with a strong Ukrainian accent.

A Bookmark system is provided to remember a file or web page selection.

A special folder My Documents\My Vymova Files  is created to store bookmarks and speech files.

The Options dialog allows you to customize the software appearance and performance to meet your specific purposes and your level of familiarity with the Ukrainian language and the Vymova software.

VymovaPro is the title of the Ukrainian pronunciation guide software. The title originates from Ukrainian word вимова (vymova) - pronunciation. Pro means the program includes many advanced features:
(1) Ukrainian-English-Ukrainian translation dictionary;
(2)  any Ukrainian text can be read aloud live or recorded with the text-to-MP3 converter and bookmark system, extremely useful for lengthy reading;
(3)  smart transliteration from English letters to Ukrainian and vice versa; and
(4)  Ukrainian word grammatical look-up.

There are five major areas of the VymovaPro window:
Menus at the top of the screen;
Toolbar at the upper right;
Editable/Ukrainian Lookup at the far left;
Web view frame at the center right; and
Quick view frame at the lower right.

You may adjust the size of each frame with your mouse. Drag your mouse across a frame boundary until the cursor changes to a double headed arrow. Then click and drag the frame border.  

Toolbar functions are highlighted when you move the mouse over the toolbar buttons.

Editable tab shows a frame where any text may be typed, edited, pasted from the clipboard (Ctrl-V) or loaded from a text file. When text in this frame is selected, it can be read, read to mp3 file or translated in the dictionary. Click the Editable or Look-up tabs to switch between these frames.

Ukrainian look-up shows a frame where the user can look for a specific word in the endless list of Ukrainian words. The switch below the word list determines whether the list will contain only basic words or all word forms (approximately 10 times more). Text may be typed using a Ukrainian or English keyboard. If the Ukrainian keyboard is used, the word will be completed automatically if the corresponding setting in the Options dialog Input section is switched on.

Web view frame accepts web pages opened by using the Open dialog or by dragging-and-dropping a web page into the frame. The result of accentuation, word translation and word details are displayed here as well. To navigate back and forward between web pages click the respective arrows. Navigation control commands are also available from View menu. You may also click the right mouse button to open the context menu with forward and back commands. Commands accessible there include changing text encoding, copying a selection to the clipboard, and refreshing the window content.

Quick view frame (bottom of the screen) is an additional text frame which can receive output of dictionary, transliteration and accentuation commands. You may type there or select some text in the Editable or Ukrainian frame to be sent there. To switch the output target between Web view frame and Quick view frame click on the Target dropdown list. You may show/hide Quick view from the View menu Quick View item.

Active selection refers to the piece of text selected in the currently active Editable, Web or Quick view frames, or if no text is selected, active selection is the entire content of the Editable frame or a selected item in the wordlist in the Ukrainian Look-up frame. Progy’s eyes will hint what is active at the moment.

Progy is the short name of Pronounciation Guide. His head, if visible, is for fun. He follows the active frame with his eyes and blinks sometimes. More functions for Progy are planned in upcoming versions. To show/hide the Progy's face refer to the Options dialog Multimedia section.

Status message appearing on the right of Progy's face displays useful information about the current status and may have hints.

How to translate words
Click the Translate selected words button and up to 12 words from the active selection will be translated. If the selection contains Ukrainian words they will be translated to English; otherwise, English words will be translated to Ukrainian. Sometimes a certain word may belong to more than one entry. For instance, the Ukrainian word плачу will be found in three different entries: плакати, платити and плач. In such cases translations for all "found" word entries will be displayed. Queried words will be highlighted in Web View output. This Translate command is available from the Dictionary menu as well: Dictionary/Word Translation. You may select words in the dictionary output and look up their translation, grammatical details or listen their pronunciation.
Adjust word translation preferences in Options dialog. Among other options, you can toggle on/off displaying a dictionary output in English letters.
 

How to open a document
Click the Open button or File/Open menu item, type an Internet address or browse for the desired document. It might be a web page or a text document. Click OK. Web pages will be opened in the Web View Frame and text files will be opened in the Editable.

You may also drag-and-drop a web page to the Web View Frame.

How to bookmark the active selection
Click the Bookmarks button or File/Bookmarks menu item. Edit the bookmark name or leave the name the software generated. Click Save. If a bookmark with same name exists you will be prompted to overwrite it. The current selection will be saved for the next time the bookmark is opened.

How to open a bookmark
Click the Bookmarks button or File/Bookmarks and select the desired bookmark in the bookmark listbox. Click Go To. Bookmarks for web pages will be opened in the Web View Frame and bookmarks for text files will be opened in the Editable frame. If web page opening is slow, click the Stop Loading button. The bookmarked selection will be restored.

How to accentuate the active selection
Click the Accentuate button. If your selection is too lengthy, accentuation could take too much time. Status message shows elapsed and estimated left time. Pressing the escape key terminates the accentuation procedure. New feature: When the Pronunciation/Proceed to End menu item is selected, text will be accentuated to the end.

How to play the active selection
Click the Pronounce button and the chosen voice (see Options/Multimedia) will read the active selection until the end or stop command whatever happens earlier. To stop pronouncing immediately push the same button or the escape key. New feature: When the Pronunciation/Proceed to End menu item is selected, text will be played to the end.

How convert text to MP3
Click the Text-to-MP3 button and the active selection will be saved to the default MP3 file. The file default location and sound quality can be adjusted in the Options/Multimedia dialog. The menu command Pronunciation/Speak to Default File does the same thing. You may also specify the file location with the menu command Pronunciation/Speak to File... Text-to-MP3 conversion will stop at the end of the text selection or on user command, whichever happens earlier. To stop conversion immediately push the same button or escape key.

How to view grammatical details
Click the Word details button and grammatical details (paradigm) for up to 12 words of the active selection will be displayed. Sometimes a certain word may belong to different entries. For instance, Ukrainian word плачу will be found in three different entry: плакати, платити and плач. In such cases paradigms for all found entries will be displayed. A word you queried will be highlighted in the grammatical details if you selected the Web View frame as the output target. This command is available from the menu as well: Dictionary/Word Details.
 
To see details for words from Ukrainian Look-up just double click on item. Adjust the explanation language and appearance in the Options dialog.

The Options dialog customizes the software appearance and performance to meet your specific purposes and your current familiarity with the Ukrainian language and the software.

The Options dialog consists of three sheets which are available by clicking on respective tabs: Input, Output and Multimedia.

Input tab: Switch the first option (Consider English letters as Ukrainian text) on if you will input Ukrainian text in English (Roman) rather than Ukrainian (Cyrillic) letters.

You may adjust Ukrainian words look-up in two ways. You may alter the appearance of the word list to show words in the Ukrainian (Cyrillic) alphabet; the English (Roman) alphabet; or in a combination. You may also enable or disable word autocompletion while typing Ukrainian letters in the edit box. Autocompletion facilitates access to Ukrainian words in the translation/grammatical dictionary for those unfamiliar with the Ukrainian alphabet.

Output tab: On the Output sheet the top three general options control the appearance of accentuation output text. Accentuated text may be composed of either Ukrainian or English letters or combinations of both. We recommend users with Windows 98/ME systems check Show compatible stress. This will allow them to hear the accentuated text correctly. Select this option if you intend to edit accentuated text (e.g. to adjust word or phraze stresses).
Check Hide stresses and no stress will be shown.

In the Dictionary explanation section choose the way Ukrainian grammatical forms will be explained and alphabet in which translation will be displayed and the language of explanation in the Word Details view. Friendly explanation normally shows only the definition of the specific grammatical form input by the user. Note, that friendly explanations sometimes might be not exact so this option is usually better for advanced users. No explanations are shown when all options in this section are unchecked.
If you are not familiar with the Ukrainian alphabet it is probably easier for you to learn Ukrainian when Ukrainian words are spelled with English letters and the English explanation (in the Word Details view) is provided. So check the In English item. 

In the last two sections of this sheet you may change font size and typeface and the background for Accentuation and Word Details commands output.

Multimedia Tab: Here you may select the voice in which text is read, configure the text-to-mp3 feature and adjust the software interface.

To transliterate Ukrainian text to English (Roman) letters or extract Ukrainian text from text spelled in English, use the command from menu Dictionary/Transliterate.

If you see gibberish instead of Ukrainian (Cyrillic) letters in the Web View frame the most likely reason is erroneous text encoding. To switch to encoding, click the right mouse button somewhere in Web View window (but do not right-click on a picture, link or selection). Then, in the context menu that appears choose Encoding and in the opened submenu look for items beginning with the word Cyrillic. Try them. If this does not work or no Cyrillic items appear on the menu, click the item More and look in the subsubmenu for items beginning with Cyrillic. The item Cyrillic (Windows) and Unicode (UTF-8) are most applicable.

If you see gibberish instead of Ukrainian (Cyrillic) letters in the Editable frame Known Problemss section if the problem persists.

Ukrainian (Cyrillic) letters still do not appear? Typically, you may see vertical bars instead Ukrainian letters in the Editable and Look-up frames. This means you should configure your computer to activate Ukrainian (Cyrillic) letters. Follow these steps: