Multilingual airport announcements

[Pax Vobiscum]

Today's 'Word of Mouth' on Radio 4 discussed the 'scripts' used by announcers at railway stations. It led me to ponder who does the announcements at (e.g.) LHR T1 departures. It sounds to me like the same person doing (admittedly rather standardised) announcements in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish (at least), that sound 'authentic' in pronunciation and intonation.

Now, I'm assuming that the person responsible is not genuinely multilingual - if they were, they'd be working as a translator in Brussels or the UN. It doesn't sound to me as though these announcements are prerecorded, so how is this done? I expect there's someone at PPRuNe who can tell me!

Just curious ...

[Air-Geko]

Actually, many larger veunes are using a digital system to handle their paging. An operator may simply key in the message, upload it to the paging controller, and then the page goes out one or more of several synthesized languages. Some of these systems can be preprogrammed to make announcements at certain points in the day (you didn't really think the "white zone is for loading and unloading only" announcement went out live each time, did you?) and with airports and train stations offering the same schedule day after day, it makes sense. In the U.S. and many other parts of the world, the Media Matrix and IED lines operate in a vast number of Airports and stations.

http://mm.peavey.com/products/controlmatrix/chost.cfm

Air-Geko

[Pax Vobiscum]

Hi Air-Geko,

Yes I thought of the possibility of a computer-generated voice. If it is computer-generated, it's the most advanced system I've ever heard - most of them don't sound very realistic (in part, because they don't need to as long as they're comprehensible).

It's certainly seems not to be prerecorded, since you get snippets like "will the last remaining nnn passengers for flight xxx please go to gate yyy, where their flight is ready for departure".

Who can forget the White Zone/Red Zone dialogue from Airplane! (http://corky.net/scripts/airplane.html) - it still creases me up every time I fly from LAX!

Still curious ...

[leonbrumsack]

I was under the impression that announcements, such as "Would the final passenger for flight XYZ to ABC..." were generally made by the gate staff - at least this is how I've seen it done at LHR!

[Air-Geko]

Correct, the gate announcements are primarily made at the location. Many of the systems have four button wall controllers -- one button would be for the boarding area, another may be for the boarding area plus a limited number of gates adjacent, yet another for the entire concourse, etc. For that, they often use a unit called Page Matrix (if using the Peavey system), which not only controls which button means what on each and every station, but can also be set up to record the message and play it back a few seconds later if someone else is already making an announcement in a selected zone. Additionally, you can add in features where the gate staff can call an in-house number and it records the anouncement for playback within a few seconds. It's pretty slick...

Air-geko

[PAXboy]

Some systems work with sampled voice, rather than synthesized. This makes it sound natural - because it is! Some use pre-recorded snippets that are played in the correct sequence from digital storage.

For example, the agent can select the standard message for 'Will the last nn pax..." and then key in the number of missing pax. The computer then picks the pre-recorded number and slots it seamlessly into the output. The same method is used when you are queuing in a telephone system and are told how many callers are ahead of you, or the estimated time to answer.

[Pax Vobiscum]

Thanks all. I suppose with a relatively fixed set of announcements, a computer can stitch it all together fairly seamlessly. It still sounds (to my ear) far more natural than even high-end voice synthesis kit that you hear (all too often) on e.g. telephone call handling systems.

[PAXboy]

The bottom line is that it is cheaper to pay for one VERY sophisticated system (and a back-up) and depreciate it over 10 years, than to have multi-lingual humans on hand for every hour that you are open for biz.

There will always be manual overrides for the truly unusual but all emergency evacuation notices and so forth are pre-recorded and ready to go. As they are in many aircraft, so that staff can get on with other things.