Index: tools/voice.pl
===================================================================
--- tools/voice.pl	(revision 16863)
+++ tools/voice.pl	(working copy)
@@ -267,7 +267,11 @@
             close(ESPEAK);
         }
         case "sapi" {
-            print({$$tts_object{"stdin"}} "SPEAK\t$output\t$string\r\n");
+            my $escape_string;
+            $escape_string = $string;
+            $escape_string =~ s/(.)/sprintf('%d,', ord($1))/eg;
+            chop($escape_string);
+            print({$$tts_object{"stdin"}} "SPEAK\t$output\t$escape_string\r\n");
         }
         case "swift" {
             $cmd = "swift $tts_engine_opts -o \"$output\" \"$string\"";
@@ -373,7 +377,7 @@
                     }
                     else {
                         voicestring($voice, $wav, $tts_engine_opts, $tts_object);
-                        wavtrim($wav, 500, $tts_object);
+                        # wavtrim($wav, 500, $tts_object);
                         # 500 seems to be a reasonable default for now
                     }
 
Index: tools/sapi_voice.vbs
===================================================================
--- tools/sapi_voice.vbs	(revision 16863)
+++ tools/sapi_voice.vbs	(working copy)
@@ -223,13 +223,15 @@
 ' Decode an UTF-8 string into a standard windows unicode string (UTF-16)
 Function UTF8decode(ByRef sText)
     Dim i, c, nCode, nTail, nTextLen
+    Dim aData
     
     UTF8decode = ""
+    aData = Split(sText, ",", -1)
     nTail = 0
-    nTextLen = Len(sText)
-    i = 1
+    nTextLen = UBound(aData)
+    i = 0
     While i <= nTextLen
-        c = Asc(Mid(sText, i, 1))
+        c = CInt(AData(i))
         i = i + 1
         If c <= &h7F Or c >= &hC2 Then ' Start of new character
             If c < &h80 Then     ' U-00000000 - U-0000007F, 1 byte
@@ -249,7 +251,7 @@
 
             While nTail > 0 And i <= nTextLen
                 nTail = nTail - 1
-                c = Asc(Mid(sText, i, 1))
+                c = CInt(AData(i))
                 i = i + 1
                 If (c And &hC0) = &h80 Then ' Valid continuation char
                     nCode = nCode * &h40 + (c And &h3F)