I’m going to explain the way I use to create my own deck with the pronunciation of the sentences I have been collecting.

Every time I see a sentence I want to learn, I copy it and paste into an excel spreadsheet where the first column is the sentence in the original language and in the second one, the translation. You can use so many columns as you want.

When I want to import this data into Anki I wan to get an associated sound with every sentence. For this purpose, we are going to use TTS, which is not perfect but is better than nothing.

The programs we will need are:
-DSpeech
-Microsoft Excel (sorry, no Oo unless you are an expert scripter)
-ASAP Utilities
-ReNamer (Optional and you can use any other file renamer you like).

We have to install ASAP Utilities at first. This utilities allow us to work in several ways with the spreadsheet.

The first we have to do is copy the spreadsheet for its edition and after the audio files have been created, we can delete this spreadsheet and only keep the original one. Select all the sentences in the original languages that we want to get an audio version. Then, in the ASAP Utilities menu, choose “6. Columns & rows” and “6. Insert between empty rows or columns”



These options are the correct one, except for the range that depends on the cells you previously selected. After this, a empty row will be inserted between rows. Maybe you have no idea why we are doing this, but you will understand later (I guess).

Ok, now is time to fill that empty gaps. With all that cells selected (filled and empty), go to ASAP Utilities menu, choose “10.Fill”-> “1.Fill empty cells in selection”. Type “#BREAK” without quotes.

Interesting, it seems better than before… super! Now open the DSpeech application and configure the voice that you want (You have to search on the internet to “buy” one, bear in mind that “natural voice” are the best one). That in the “Split options” of the “Audio Book creation”, the “Fully custom (use BREAK keyword only) is selected.
And now we can create our audio files. Save the files in the format you want in the audio menu and the filename you want, that would be a suffix because it will create several numbered files thanks to the #BREAK keyword. I’m using usually a suffix relating to the kind of phrases I’m importing like “JP” or “JP-Manga”…
After a while, a folder is created with the audio files.

Hmmm, what is the next? Oooh, yeah, you can insert a prefix with a file renamer to add a zero, if you plan to have more than 999 sentences and have it ordered, but this is not an important step.

Now we want to import to Anki the Excel data. We have to make a method to import the audio automatically. So, if the audio files are like “0125_D-Speech”. On a new column add a value using the options 6->1 of  ASAP and write “[sound:” without quotes. Next you have the option to download any program that generates a list of the files of a directory in a txt format or use the option 10->9 to add the numbers like in your audio filenames and then use the option 8->2 to add the suffix of your files (_D-Speech in my example). Don’t forget to add the “.mp3]” that we “forgot” in the first step.
There is way easier than that to do this last step using only the “quick numbering option”… but this is my quick and dirty way, I might explain the easier one another day.

Well, then you can copy your spreadsheet to a notepad windows, save it and importing into Anki. Then copy the audio files to the media folder et voila!

I know my English is not so good but I hope you can use this tutorial if you are patience. If it is hard to understand maybe make a screencast.

I recommend do this after a thousand of sentences or more because make these steps for 4 sentences can be annoying.