Windows XP includes a simple text to speech feature. You can do the same thing on the command line with the program Festival, which is in the Ubuntu 6.10 repositories.
apt-get install festival
Once Festival is installed you can start its prompt by typing festival. Use it like this when in Festival’s prompt:
(SayText "Your computer is speaking this text.")
Read a file out loud with this command:
festival --tts reading.txt
The coolest part is yet to come! In Ubuntu 7.04, the repository includes festival-gaim, which will speak out what your friends are typing to you in Gaim. Of course you can alway go all the way and use Skype if you want to eliminate reading and typing.
apt-get install skype


[...] while ago I played with the Festival text-to-speech program. Now I’ve found a similar application called eSpeak, which is included in every default [...]
text to mp3 conversion tool, online, type any text in text box, click text to speech button, and get the download link to mp3 / wav file. simple and cool. on http://www.wordtosound.com
Amazing! This was exactly what I was looking for! Thank you very much!
EEEpc does not play well with this! I like others may have to wait for new ubuntu …one more week folks is what I heard until it is safely out of “beta” I am working on a program to translate and use virtual “signing” for hearing impaired because of current disability. However the program I am working on would use avatars as “signings “buddies” and I want capabilities to translate to other languages.
Muy bien que tenga el speech en ubuntu, acaso no tiene voces en español????
EL festival funciona muy bien con voces en español (aunque sigue oyendose robotico y eso), como muestra una voz femenina en festival en el siguiente link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJI_4h66qc4&feature=player_embedded
El articulo completo para gregar estas voces lo encunentras en:
http://waystop.blogspot.com/2011/08/festival-instalacion-agregando-nuevas.html
Espero te sirva. Saludos