Eleven more languages are generally available for Azure Neural Text-to-Speech

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

This post is co-authored with Lihui Wang, Gang Wang, Xinfeng Chen, Qinying Liao, Garfield He and Sheng Zhao

Neural Text-to-Speech (Neural TTS), part of Speech in Azure Cognitive Services, enables you to convert text to lifelike speech for more natural user interactions. Neural TTS has powered a wide range of scenarios, from audio content creation to natural-sounding voice assistants, for customers from all over the world. Today we are happy to announce that 6 new languages were added to the Neural TTS portfolio with 12 voices available, and the 10 voices in preview with 5 languages are now generally available.

Six new languages

12 voices from 6 brand-new languages, with one male and one female voice in each language are available now: Nia in ‘cy-GB’ Welsh (United Kingdom), Aled in ‘cy-GB’ Welsh (United Kingdom), Rosa in ‘en-PH’ English (Philippines), James in ‘en-PH’ English (Philippines), Charline in ‘fr-BE’ French (Belgium), Gerard in ‘fr-BE’ French (Belgium), Dena in ‘’nl-BE Dutch (Belgium), Arnaud in ‘nl-BE’ Dutch (Belgium), Polina in ‘uk-UA’ Ukranian (Ukraine), Ostap in ‘uk-UA’ Ukranian (Ukraine), Uzma in ‘ur-PK’ Urdu (Pakistan), and Asad in ‘ur-PK’ Urdu (Pakistan).

Hear the samples below or try them with your own text in our product demo on Azure.

Locale code	Language	Gender	Voice name	Audio sample
cy-GB	Welsh (UK)	Female	cy-GB-NiaNeural	Mae’r ysgol ar agor drwy’r wythnos.
cy-GB	Welsh (UK)	Male	cy-GB-AledNeural	Mae Bangor 8 milltir o Gaernarfon.
en-PH	English (Philippines)	Female	en-PH-RosaNeural	I need to buy a mineral water.
en-PH	English (Philippines)	Male	en-PH-JamesNeural	Let’s meet tomorrow at 6 pm.
fr-BE	French (Belgium)	Female	fr-BE-CharlineNeural	On se voit pour dîner demain ?
fr-BE	French (Belgium)	Male	fr-BE-GerardNeural	Il existe 2 manières de participer.
nl-BE	Dutch (Belgium)	Female	nl-BE-DenaNeural	Hij is al urenlang online.
nl-BE	Dutch (Belgium)	Male	nl-BE-ArnaudNeural	Ik vond vele kabouters in hun tuin.
uk-UA	Ukrainian (Ukraine)	Female	uk-UA-PolinaNeural	У Києві завершили реставрацію Андріївської церкви.
uk-UA	Ukrainian (Ukraine)	Male	uk-UA-OstapNeural	Загалом було оновлено 4 395 км доріг.
ur-PK	Urdu (Pakistan)	Female	ur-PK-UzmaNeural	واہ! کیا ہی خوبصورت نظارہ ہے۔
ur-PK	Urdu (Pakistan)	Male	ur-PK-AsadNeural	سورج گرہن پاکستانی وقت کے مطابق شام 6 بج کر 34 منٹ پر شروع ہو گا۔

With this update, Azure TTS now supports 60 languages in total. Check out the figure below for more details or see the full language list.

Five preview languages now GA

Last November, we released 5 languages in preview with 10 voices for European locales. Now these languages become generally available in all Neural TTS regions/datacenters. Azure TTS now has full support for all 24 European languages.

Locale code	Language	Gender	Voice name	Audio samples
et-EE	Estonian (Estonia)	Female	et-EE-AnuNeural	Pese voodipesu kord nädalas või vähemalt kord kahe nädala järel ning ära unusta pesta ka kardinaid.
et-EE	Estonian (Estonia)	Male	et-EE- KertNeural	Ametlikku meetodit sellise pettuse avastamiseks ei olegi olemas.
ga-IE	Irish (Ireland)	Female	ga-IE- OrlaNeural	Tá an scoil sa mbaile ar oscailt arís inniu.
ga-IE	Irish (Ireland)	Male	ga-IE- ColmNeural	Ritheadh próiseas comhairliúcháin faoin scéal sa bhfómhar.
lt-LT	Lithuanian (Lithuania)	Female	lt-LT- OnaNeural	Derinti motinystę ir kūrybą išmokau jau po pirmojo vaiko gimimo.
lt-LT	Lithuanian (Lithuania)	Male	lt-LT- LeonasNeural	Aišku, anksčiau ar vėliau paaiškės tos priežastys.
lv-LV	Latvian (Latvia)	Female	lv-LV-EveritaNeural	Daži tumšās šokolādes gabaliņi dienā ir gandrīz būtiska uztura sastāvdaļa.
lv-LV	Latvian (Latvia)	Male	lv-LV- NilsNeural	Aizvadīto gadu uzņēmums noslēdzis ar 6,3 miljonu eiro zaudējumiem.
mt-MT	Maltese (Malta)	Female	mt-MT-GraceNeural	Fid-diskors tiegħu, is-Segretarju Parlamentari fakkar li dan il-Gvern daħħal numru ta’ liġijiet u inizjattivi li jħarsu lill-annimali.
mt-MT	Maltese (Malta)	Male	mt-MT- JosephNeural	Anki tfajjel tal-primarja jaf li l-popolazzjoni tikber fejn hemm il-prosperità.

How to integrate with the new voices/languages

Azure TTS now covers more languages of the world. Applications using Azure TTS can be easily updated to support coverage of additional countries. All the voices are available in the same API and SDK. Developers can just edit the voice and locale list in their applications to use these new voices without code logic modifications.

For instance, Microsoft Teams auto attendants lets people call your organization and navigate a menu system to speak to the right department, call queue, person, or an operator. It uses Azure TTS to render customized prompts as a call response. To better localize audio prompts for different countries, Teams has been integrated with the new TTS languages to serve more customers around the world.

Want more languages or voices?

If you find that the language which you are looking for is not supported by Azure TTS, reach out to your sales representative, or file a support ticket on Azure. We’d be happy to engage and discuss how to support the languages you need. You can also customize and create a brand voice with your speech data for your apps using the Custom Neural Voice feature.

Tell us your experiences!

By offering more voices across more languages and locales, we anticipate developers across the world will be able to build applications that change experiences for millions. Whether you are building a voice-enabled chatbot or IoT device, an IVR solution, adding read-aloud features to your app, converting e-books to audio books, or even adding Speech to a translation app, you can make all these experiences natural sounding and fun with Neural TTS.

Let us know how you are using or plan to use Neural TTS voices in this form. If you prefer, you can also contact us at mstts [at] microsoft.com. We look forward to hearing about your experience and look forward to developing more compelling services together with you for the developers around the world.