Sound out game

‎Sound It Out on the App Store

Description

Sound It Out is a game that will help your child discover phonics. It was developed by a kindergarten teacher to promote beginning phonics. It has beginning, middle and ending sounds. It has a trace option as well as a spell option. There are two levels of play. One level for beginning spellers and the second level is for those that need an extra challenge.

Sound It Out uses CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant) to promote letter sounds and spelling. It helps children use letters and their sounds to create words. Colorful pictures are provided to show the child which word they are sounding out, spelling or identifying.

You can add an unlimited number of students and every student answer is tracked and can be reviewed in results. Perfect for understanding progress and customizing learning plans for your child or student.

Download your copy today and let the fun begin!

Mar 29, 2020

Version 3.6.1

Enhancements and improvements which include the following:
> Improved navigation on the student management screens
> Remove ability to repeatedly click the "next word" button within the game
> Optimized support for iOS 13
> Updated database framework to latest version

Ratings and Reviews

3 Ratings

K Teacher

I really like this app! It's great to use in my small groups. They think we're just playing a game :). I especially like that you can adjust it to manually change the words to give the kiddos a chance to practice sounding it out on their own. The art work is darling!

Great for early readers

I'm a first grade teacher with a daughter in kindergarten. I was looking for an app that would help her grow her phonics skills. By the time your kiddo gets to first grade they should be able to sound out CVC words. This app is great for 4 and 5 year olds and those 6 & 7 year olds who are struggling with reading. I like how there are different levels for your child's skill set to grow. For example one skill set shows the kids how to spell the words so they just drag the sounds to make the word. Another skill set is the word is read and the child has to sound it out. I also like how it's a child's voice that does the letter sound when the tile is touched. The graphics are great too and the drawings are too cute for words.

What I'm confused by is when your child spells the word wrong and they have to redo it the game doesn't recognize the correction and won't grab the tiles. So your child can't get the satisfaction of fixing the mistake. Also the short-o and short-u sound don't sound correct to me. It should be more pronounced for young ears to hear it and mimic it. I'd also like to see the word sounded and blended together once the child is done spelling it.

Overall as a teacher and a mom I approve of the app. It would get the fifth star if those things mentioned would be fixed. I'm pleased with my purchase and happy to support a fellow teacher's app. :)

Thanks for your comment. We fixed the vowel sounds so that they are easier to hear and understand. It also now blends the word after they have spelled the word correctly. I'm so glad a fellow teacher is using the app. :)

Thanks for new features

Thanks for adding sounds. Great game for all my kids now.

The developer, HAVOC, has not provided details about its privacy practices and handling of data to Apple. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

No Details Provided

The developer will be required to provide privacy details when they submit their next app update.

Information

Seller

HAVOC, LLC

Size

17 MB

Category

Education

Age Rating

4+, Made for Ages 0–5

Copyright

© 2012 - 2020, HAVOC, LLC

Price

$0.99

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Sound It Out!

About this Game

Premium Activity

The standards correlation for this activity is coming soon!

The standards correlation for this activity is coming soon!

Sound It Out! lets beginning readers practice phoneme (letter sound) and grapheme (sound spelling) relationships by dragging and dropping letters to spell a word correctly. Students can choose from two game themes.

Try Sound It Out!

with a sample list!

• K-2ndDigraphs Diverse
• K-2ndLong e Words
• 3rd-5thLong Vowel Patterns
• 3rd-5thDiphthong oi/oy

Note: Although this activity is designed for the grade levels above, it can also be used as a remediation or enrichment activity at any grade level with an appropriate word list.

Create your own word lists and more with Premium Membership

Learn More

• Foundational Skills
• Phonics

What? When a beginning reader comes across an unfamiliar word, they are often told to sound it out. More...Less

Sounding out involves decoding, which is applying knowledge of letter-sound correspondence and patterns in order to pronounce words correctly. Decoding is a foundational skill needed to build phonics and reading fluency. Kindergarten and first grade students learn to decode words with simple patterns, like CVC words. From third grade on, students begin identifying word chunks to decode multisyllabic words. Some words are more difficult to sound out than others, due to irregular phonetic patterns.

When? Students first learn about letters (graphemes) and the their relation to sounds (phonemes) in kindergarten and first grade when studying the alphabet. More...Less

Kindergartners and first graders will then learn to build on their alphabetic knowledge to be able to decode and sound out simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, like cat. As students move to higher grade levels, they will be exposed to increasingly complex phonetic patterns. For example, first grade students will study vowel digraphs like /ow/. In 2nd grade, students will study silent letter patterns, like /kn/. Later, in upper elementary and middle school, students will be exposed to multisyllabic words and will chunk word parts, like prefixes and suffixes, to decode. Throughout K-12 English language arts, students will learn phonetic patterns in order to better sound out words and become fluent readers.

How to teach: Often teachers assign weekly spelling words that follow a particular spelling pattern. Sound It Out! engages students in interactive spelling practice. The learning game can be used during literacy centers or part of homework, as independent work.

Play to learn: Students click the sound blocks to sound out the words they hear. More...Less

A word is broken up by graphemes, just how words are broken up in an Elkonin box. When a student places the letter(s) in the wrong spot, immediate feedback is given. Students are given 1 to 5 attempts depending on the number of graphemes in the word. After using all attempts or after a correct response, the game will show students the correct way to sound out the word and will show the word in Elkonin boxes. Students who responded correctly can skip over the visual of the Elkonin boxes and the audio of the correct pronunciation. Students will continue to work on the game until they have tried to sound out all words on their word list.

Teaching Tip: Sound it Out! can supplement K-8 phonics instruction during word study or homework. VocabularySpellingCity’s ready-made Words Their Way lists are a suitable choice for students K-12. Primary students can practice simple spelling patterns, like the silent e. Students in grades 3-5 can sound out more complex patterns, like final unstressed syllables, while students in grades 6-12 can benefit from Sound It Out! to decode multisyllabic words. English Language Learners (ELLs) can benefit from phonics practice using Sound It Out! because of the audio visual features. Sound It Out! can be effective with high frequency words, as they follow unusual phonetic patterns and are difficult to sound out. Also, avoid pairing the game with an abbreviations word list.

See all activities!

Translating and Voice-Over Games: A Beginner's Guide

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Stage I: Deconstruction of resources and technical testing
• Stage II: Organize files and study lore
• Phase III: Translation and stacking of text
• Stage IV: Working with actors
• Stage V: Sound Processing
• Stage VI: Assembly and General Testing
• Stage VII: Release and promotion of
• Conclusion

Introduction

How does the process of game localization work in the mind of the average Internet user? A person takes a piece of paper, sits down in front of a microphone and reads the text in the most monotonous voice (wrapped in a blanket - an advanced layman will add). Then the recorded lines magically appear in the game - and that's it, the product is ready to use!

Jokes are jokes, but this topic is practically not disclosed. Various interviews with translators and dubbing actors sometimes pop up on the network, which highlight various nuances of the process of adapting projects into Russian, but these are just elements - you can’t make up a general picture from them. And what about those who decided to master this difficult but entertaining craft from scratch? Let's figure it out.

I'll start with a brief explanation. All of the following is based solely on my own experience gained while working on the translation and voice acting of Risen 3, Darkest Dungeon, Codex of Victory, Bastion and Transistor as part of the GameSVoiCE studio. This is an unofficial and non-commercial activity, and I don’t know how the principles of work described in this material coincide with what happens in the “kitchen” of professional localization studios.

But if you want to translate and voice your favorite game, which for some reason was ignored by others, or just understand what obstacles may arise in the process of work, this text is your guide, guide and instruction. I do not promise that what I have written will be interesting to read, but you will definitely take out a lot of new things from here.

recommendations

So, to begin with, I urge you to realize that localization is a slow, costly and very thankless process. Even a relatively small project can devour several months of your life and a four-figure sum of money from you, and in the end they will pour a bucket of slop on you just because in one of the scenes the hero uttered a remark in an arrogant, not contemptuous tone, or because ashen one you translated as "ash". Therefore, first of all, with a clear mind, answer the main question: do you need it at all?

Next, you should decide what to take. If your goal is to localize a series of games, start with the smallest and shortest of the list so that you can understand how well you are doing the task with an example of insignificant volumes. I don’t recommend taking on games with an episodic release model (like Telltale’s) - although they are easier to work with due to a more understandable structure, you risk letting a lot of people down if after the first chapter you realize that you don’t drag it and decide to jump off.

Stage I: Resource Parsing and Technical Testing

Start of work is preceded by removal of all text and sound files from the game. It's extremely rare that this goodness lies directly in a folder, in an unprotected form, so you will need the help of a person who has experience working with file libraries. How and with what to open this or that container, you can also look on the net, but in this matter, knowledge is more important than the ability to blindly follow instructions: even if you open the necessary archives, it’s not a fact that you can then properly pack everything back after editing.

When working in a team, this stage is usually not a problem. GameSVoiCE has a full-time programmer who sorts and collects resources at the request of project curators. The only obstacle in this process is time, because encryption algorithms differ depending on the engine and format, and they can sometimes confuse even an experienced specialist.

If you are on your own, you should look for like-minded people. Test the waters on sites and communities dedicated to the game of your choice, leave a request on specialized translation sites like Zone of Games, enlist the support of a voice acting studio. It is very difficult to pull the whole process alone - too much burden on the shoulders of one person. And this is time and energy.

Also be prepared for the fact that your project will be technically impossible to implement. The game "Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor" is an excellent candidate for voice acting, but so far no one has been able to open it in order to at least calculate the volumes. Sometimes utilities that allow you to extract the contents of text and sound archives appear only after years, and nothing can be done about it.

Let's assume that the first stage is successfully overcome and you have a folder with source materials. Now you have to evaluate the scope of work and compare them with your own capabilities. Often all audio files are lumped together, and you first need to separate the background sounds and music from the actual characters' lines. And even if there is a clear structure in the folders, it is better to manually listen to each file, because sometimes there are lines among the sounds that should also be re-voiced.

Technical testing is an optional but desirable feature. It is better to make sure that your text and voice embedding tools are working in advance, and when making changes to the game archives, there are no problems with the launch and performance of the application. At the same time, it is worth checking how the engine reacts to specific characters: “ё”, em dash, quotation marks.

Stage II: Organizing files and studying the lore

What the programmer sent you cannot yet be given to the actors with the explanation “here are the materials, then figure it out yourself.” It is important to take care of convenience: both your own and those who have yet to work with your files. Captions for subtitles are usually stored separately from menu texts and descriptions, and they should be transferred from the "native" format to the production environment. Best option: Excel spreadsheets.

What is it for? To have quick access to all voiced cues in the game. This makes it easier to search by words if the goal is to get rid of objectionable vocabulary or outdated terminology. This allows you to count the number of lines, make notes and sort the blocks in the desired sequence. Such a table is your "operational headquarters", the heart of localization. It will serve you for days, so don't be afraid to overdo it with information and don't neglect its design.

First of all, you need to synchronize the audio files themselves with their subtitles: understand where exactly the text is stored and where the sound is. There is no universal tip to speed up this process, because a lot depends on how the files are initially structured. In Bastion and Transistor, everything is clear: in the Subtitles folder, the texts are broken down into levels, in Audio - the replicas themselves. Using Total Commander, we massively copy the names of sound files from the first folder into Excel, then paste texts in English and Russian opposite them. We listen to the sounds, compare them with the subtitles. We repeat the procedure with the remaining folders.

My colleagues working with Dark Souls III were less fortunate. In this game, the audio is divided into archives, each contains several characters at once. These files had no tags, so sorting out the lines by roles was almost a matter of touch, or rather, by ear, comparing them with texts on foreign fan sites. In Risen 3, the big trouble was with contextual battle cries (SVM), when in a similar vein for each NPC, the necessary one and a half hundred phrases were singled out from an array of 10 thousand lines.

If the game assumes one key role (the main character or an outside observer comments on events), it makes sense to group blocks of speech in chronological order, within levels or missions, and also make notes regarding the development of the plot. This information is unlikely to be useful to you, but it will help the actor not to lose the thread of the story and better understand the story.

In projects with a lot of medium and small roles, it is desirable to build lines so that the dialogue structure is not disturbed, and then create several tables for each of the characters separately, especially for the actors. It is better not to delete the lines of other characters from such texts, but simply darken them so that it is easier to understand what mannerisms and intonations in a given situation should be played out.

Finally, you yourself must have exceptional knowledge of the game's universe. Even before the start of all the work, go through the story several times in order to determine the context of most sentences on the go. If the texts are oversaturated with short remarks like “Right back at you”, immediately make notes under what circumstances they are pronounced, because such expressions can be translated in different ways, and not every option will suit the situation.

With a meticulous approach, it is better to mark all found lines in general, which is easiest to do by looking at other people's walkthroughs on YouTube. This will help to find out the percentage of unused phrases (there are almost a quarter of them in Supergiant Games projects!) and trace the logic in the initial sorting of lines. For example, in Bastion, there are fresh fixes at the end of subtitle blocks, so if one sound container contains two similar phrases, the bottom one will always be relevant.

Stage III: Translation and text layout

Tired of it yet? Well, at least read this... The first two stages are just preparation, the real work starts from here. Do not rush to rejoice at the fact that the game has official Russian subtitles - if the publisher did not have enough money for voice acting, then the translation was probably not entrusted to the best specialists, so we most often get insipid texts without obvious errors, but with a weak level of artistic presentation.

Working with fan translations is even more difficult. Firstly, it is desirable to get the authors' approval to change the texts, and if the crack is old, then it is not easy to find its creators. Secondly, in such adaptations, only the approximate meaning of the sentences is usually preserved: turns of speech, puns, references and allegories are omitted. The quality also suffers from the fact that on sites like Notabenoid, the project is available to dozens of people with different levels of experience and knowledge, and the editor has no balls to throw out the hacks.

Many underestimate the importance of creativity, confusing the very concepts of "translation" and "localization". In any case, the Russian version will sound and be perceived differently from the original, so do not try to sit on two chairs, torn between verbatim retelling and the artistic style of presentation. Sometimes it's better to completely restructure a phrase so it doesn't sound clumsy.

The curator of the project does not need to be fluent in foreign languages. Your first priority is control. Make a glossary and bring all the terms to a single meaning, mark controversial phrases that are out of context. It is useful to have a couple of translators on hand who can be trusted with the adaptation of the most intricate expressions, but it is up to you to make changes to that very “main table” so that not a single small detail goes unnoticed and unaccounted for.

But even the presence of an initially perfect translation does not free you from a headache, because the texts have yet to be laid, adjusting the length of the localized strings to fit the original. This is necessary in order to avoid the "Witcher Syndrome", where the characters' lines were speeded up or slowed down due to a rigid binding to their pronunciation time. Moreover, this is relevant not only in those projects where it is important to get into facial animation: if in Bastion one off-screen remark "fits" into another (provided that both are not connected and are responsible for different actions), then the second one simply will not be pronounced.

The importance of laying is determined at the stage of technical testing. In Fallout 4, it is useless - there the engine automatically adjusts to the length of the lines (this allowed one team of enthusiasts to "voice" the game with a speech synthesizer), but in Risen 3, a deviation from the original timing leads to a crash. This process is also important from the point of view of the script: if in the original the character was limited to a couple of words, it is impossible that in the Russian version he mumbled, chewing his answer.

Lack of characters is usually not as critical as brute force, but it is also less common, so get ready to cold-bloodedly cut texts, eliminating unnecessary pronouns and adverbs, and sometimes even adjectives. In a hopeless situation, build on the meaning inherent in the sentence, rearranging the thought so as to express the same thing, but shorter. A large vocabulary is another of your advantages.

Let's consolidate the material with a couple of examples from the game Bastion. "Want to know how to find an Anklegator lair?" and "You use a Kid as bait.", running in sequence. The literal translation of this chain is: “Do you want to know how to find the lair of a crotodile? Use Maltz as bait." The first line is fine, but the second one is noticeably longer. We replace the ending with “Catch the Boy”: the original message has not changed, but the replica has acquired an ironic tone as a bonus. Verbatim - Adaptation - 0:1.

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