In a Q&A session on the official website SBS Artech fielded a question regarded SeeU’s English capability and highlighted their plans for a full English voicebank before the year’s end.

The fan wrote in asking why an English voicebank wasn’t included with SeeU’s when early reports stated she was planned to be tri-lingual with Japanese, Korean, and English as the planned languages. Then the fan then mentioned specific examples including an early demo of Shining Star which featured English, some aspects of which not possible with release SeeU.

The questions were fielded by SBS Artech’s Vocaloid development manager who went on to explain how they had planned to include English, but due to time restraints they weren’t able to. He went on to highlight how they included some sounds such as /f/,/z/, and /v/, which are unpronounceable in Korean, as a sort of stopgap measure so that SeeU would have at least limited English with her release. He also directed the questioner to the forums where there was an unofficial guide on how to use the Korean inputs to help achive passable English.

At the end of his response he went on to highlight that the English SeeU is still in development and was never completely scrapped, just delayed, and even revealed a tentative timeframe of “within this year”. He went on to explain that they wanted a full and complete English voicebank, of the highest quality possible, and how that was the cause of the delays.

He then ended the article thanking the person for their question and their continued interest in Vocaloid & SeeU, hoping that the fandom would continued to make more awesome songs featuring their products.

Its nice to see that SBS Artech is taking their English voicebank so seriously.

From the way the development manager phrased his response he emphasized how important the English language is to them and how it was something they weren’t willing to rush out, and how dedicated SBS Artech is in making sure they released quality.

Hopefully English SeeU’s actual English is more than just ‘passable’ and is something English natives can enjoy. No word yet as to if this English voicebank would be an expansion of her existing capabilities or if this will be a separate purchase, targeting westerners specifically.

For those interested in reading more on these developments you can visit the news thread on VocaloidOtaku or read the complete transcript after the jump below.
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