Add to iTunes as spoken text not working with no informative errors

This question was asked in Jan 2018. 66 people wanted an answer. After that time, you can't reply. Apple gives a statement ..."no one has answered in a while, start a new question." Do apple employees answer these. Do they look in to see where we are stuck?

I like to take text from simple text files on my MacBook Pro (MacOS High Sierra Version 10.13.2) and convert them to iTunes tracks on my Mac.

This process has never been a problem for me and until now I could wait ~5 minutes before a 20,000 word text file was converted to speech.

Now however, the gear icon that usually appears at the top of the screen runs continuously without showing any new signs of progress in processing the text (judging from the piechart which remains at 0% for an indefinite amount of time).

I checked for processes that are not working properly with 'Activity Monitor' and could only find one: 'com.automator.runner.xpc (Not `Responding)'. When I force quit this, the text-to-audio process quits and an window appears revealing the following error:

Automator encountered an error running this workflow: “Couldn’t communicate with a helper application.”

I googled this error but nothing informative could be found.

Can anyone help?