Book narration quality control: build a test passage

Choose difficult material from your book

Select adjoining paragraphs containing features typical of your edition. Historical writing might need dates and surnames; technical material might need quantities and units; fiction might need dialogue and narrative interruptions. A simple opening paragraph says little about harder passages later.

Keep the original spelling and punctuation. If you combine distant excerpts, mark the joins in your working notes so you do not mistake an artificial transition for a defect. Prepare and edit the sample outside TGRadio.

Build a reproducible sample

For example, write your own passage: “Vera Lanska checked the entry: 14 November, 08:30, 2.5 kilometres. ‘Have we reached the station?’ Ilya asked. Vera closed her notebook. Chapter 2. Their conversation continued in the morning.” This is invented test material, not a quotation from a published book.

In TXT, place Chapter 2 on its own line to test chapter recognition. When testing an EPUB or FB2, retain its structure in the test copy. Converting to TXT changes the conditions.

Start playback and follow the source

Add the sample through Books and Upload a book, select your voice option, and press Play. Import extracts text; audio preparation starts with playback. For the first check, keep playback speed at 1 and have the exact source passage in front of you.

Listen once without stopping, then revisit questionable passages. Record a word or short quotation instead of a general impression. For example, “the decimal part of 2.5 is unclear” is more useful than “numbers sound bad.” Test one text version at a time.

Fill in a criteria table

Create a table in an external note. Fill each row with an observation from playback; a preference alone will not identify the cause. Use these columns and checks:

Criterion What to check What to record

Name Whether the full name is recognisable Exact word and audible discrepancy

Number Whether value and unit survive Written form and what you heard

Dialogue Whether reply boundaries are clear Where the speaker change becomes unclear

Transition Whether text survives the join Last and first words of adjoining parts

Completeness Whether anything repeats or disappears Short quotation locating the problem

Identify the cause before changing anything

If the source already contains the error, correct a working copy in an external editor. If the text is correct but pronunciation is unsuitable, compare the same passage with another model. TGRadio has no pronunciation or SSML editor; changing models requires another audio version.

After a successful sample, check one difficult passage and a real chapter boundary in the full book. A constructed test cannot reproduce every feature. Keep your table with the checked filename so you can distinguish an old problem from the result of a revised upload.