You will notice that the additional shortcut allows you to start several voice threads, talking over each other plus the default system voice, which drives up processor activity, but no problem if one remembers to stop the speaking by double-executing of the shortcut for the default voice. Make sure the shortcuts don't conflict with other shortcuts. The reason for twice is because pressing it once starts the English voice over the German voice. Control+Y starts German voice for German selected text which can be stopped by clicking the main start/stop shortcut twice, here Control+S+S. The German voice I have assigned Control+Y (Yannick voice from Lion OS). So far, it works like this on my machine (OS 10.6.8): Default System Voice: Ryan (Infovox) Shortcut Selected in Speech Pref to Control+S. (The Services List can be edited/cleaned up with Service Scrubber Application and partly under System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services)Įdit: Now that you have two or more Voices under the Services Menu, you can go to: System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Application Shortcuts and create a new Shortcut for each voice. Open Automator, choose Service, Service receives selected text, drag action 'Speak Text' to build worklow select Voice (for example: Ryan Speaking) Save These are the instructions i found online and followed: So this pretty much works as on the iPad, only i have to choose which language, but you don't have to go true acceblility options to change the voices any more when i use my own made shortcut in this case (ctrl option cmd + k) it starts speaking in english. if i use option escape my default voice speaks. I actually only had to make a shortcut for karen. Note: i use 2 languages, dutch is my main, and i use english as second, i use the karen voice. i followed these steps and it works great!!!. You can use automator and keyboard shortcuts.

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