'How-to' Get Polish station announcements when you have a non Polish computer (also possibly get local language announcements working too)

[Gazz292]

I've read a few posts now from people who like me want to hear the SimRail station announcements in Polish, but hear them in their local language instead... and some people do not hear the station announcements in any language at all.

I think i've figured out the issue.
Basically when windows is first installed on your computer, the language selected installs only that languages text to speech files, and as SimRail uses TTS to read out the station announcements, if your computer is set to English but you use another language, then only the english TTS files are present, so you will not hear the announcements in your local language if you have SimRail set to it.... even if you installed a second input language for the keyboard and text, the TTS language files need to be added separately it seems.

Likewise if want to hear Polish station announcements on a non Polish computer, you need to install the Polish TTS file for this to work... plus copy the text from the pl.lang file into the local language file, i.e. for english computers this is the 'en.lang' file.

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The SimRail station announcement files are located here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SimRail\SimRail_Data\StreamingAssets\Locales\train-announcement 

Firstly i recommend making a backup of the whole 'train-announcement' folder, so you can easily put it back to standard if you mess something up... another way is to delete the 'train-announcement' folder then do a 'steam files verify' and it will download the folder again for you'

These 'LANG' files open as text files, so double click your local language file, and when it asks what program to open it in, chose a text editor like notepad, and you will see this:

The text i've highlighted below in the English and Polish language station announcement files tells windows which TTS language to use.... 

As you can see, for Polish TTS you need 'TTS language file 415' and for English TTS you need 'TTS language file 409' etc, and if you do not have that TTS language file installed, you will get no announcements.

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To install an extra text to speech language file, press the 'Windows key' the 'Control key' and the 'N key together, this opens up the windows narrator, which usually reads out text on websites / documents to you. 

Then click the highlighted area for 'Add legacy voices' and you will then get this screen:

Click 'Add voices' and you get this screen:

Type 'Polish' then click the checkbox that will come up when the Polish / Polski language file is shown, then click the 'Add' button to download it  (do the same with any other TTS language files you would like to add, like your native language.... don't worry, you do not need to set any other TTS language to default or anything, SimRail takes care of playing the announcements in your chosen language as long as the TTS files are present on your computer) 
 

Windows will then tell you to restart 'settings' and any apps to use the new voice, but i found i had to restart my computer to get the new TTS voice files to show as installed:

If all you wanted to do was hear the SimRail station announcements in your native language, it should now work, but if you'd like to hear Polish announcements, then you need to copy the Polish text from the 'pl.lang' file into the .lang file that your computer is set up to use, as i described at the beginning. 

So this is my 'en.lang' file, as i have my computer set to use english, and the SimRail language as 'automatic' :

And i hear the station announcements in Polish, just like if i was actually driving the train in Poland. 

If you decide you don't like Polish station announcements and want them read in your native language again (which should now work thanks to the extra TTS language files you downloaded into windows), copy the backup of the 'train-announcement' folder you made into SimRails 'train-announcement' folder.
Or do the 'delete the folder and steam file verify' method to get them back to standard.

i would not recommend setting these files to read only as their contents change with updates, and if set to read only you do not get the relevant updated bits that everyone else gets....
If all you wanted was to hear the announcements in your local language, there's nothing else to do, once you have the required TTS language file in windows it's there to stay.

If you like hearing the announcements in Polish, then just copy and paste the Polish test into your local .lang file again after an update that results in non Polish station announcements.

Edited April 15, 2023 by Gazz292

[Gazz292]

It seems this method can only get english language computers to play Polish announcements, 

I've been trying all day to get French and German announcements playing, and just can't.... BUT i've put everything back to how it was last night when i had working Polish announcements, and i'm getting none at all right now,   same when i reset everything, so i should hear the English announcements, 

 

Have announcements been turned off on the servers again or something? 

[Gazz292]

Something for people to try if they use a language other than english or Polish on their computer (after you have added your local language TTS file to windows)

 

RWag64 got French announcements working by copying them into the en.lang file, and modifying the text to include the missing "<break time="0.3s"/>" bits (he's shared the file he made with the modified text on the link above)
Then he changed the setting for the SimRail language in the menu to 'Automatic' and he has working station announcements for the first time

The de.lang file already has these breaks in the text, so simply copying the text from the de.lang file into the en.lang file should get announcements working in German, 

But all other languages except Polish do not have these breaks in their text, so i think you will need to modify your local language file to include these breaks in the relevant places to stand a chance of hearing station announcements. 

 

 

[weezzah]

Decided to "Polish" the train announcements and this still works like a charm; +Add Polish voice pack and then copy pl.lang into the en.lang file is what I did. I didn't see it mentioned here, hence this reply, but there are two polish TTS voices available for Windows 10/11 according to this document, namely Microsoft Adam and Microsoft Paulina.

Here are sone samples from SimRail with said voices (the videos may look big, but they're mainly audio which makes the file sizes small, only way I could upload audio, sorry for the spam look in advance):

And a bonus voice, I got a more husky version of Paulina (?) if no value was set or the name was invalid in the .lang file:

Edited December 17, 2023 by weezzah
Added link to TTS voice list

[rcr484]

Thanks for the tip, I just tried it and it works perfect in Polish now! 🙂