Spotify translates its podcasts from English to Spanish and French

Listening to podcasts in a language other than your own requires knowledge of the language in question. Spotify wants to end this ban thanks to artificial intelligence: the site will offer French, Spanish and German translations of shows originally recorded in English. While retaining the presenter’s vocal style…

Spotify has bet big on podcasts to differentiate its offering from the competition. But there you have it, the range of podcasts in English is far greater, richer and more varied than in any other language. However, it is not easy to appreciate these performances when Britney Spears’ language skills are limited. This is why Spotify is starting a pilot translation project, first from English to Spanish – French and German will come later.

Human-like synthetic voice

Spanish Episodes of Podcasts « The Lex Friedman Podcast “,” Armchair expert “and” Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett » is already available in address. More will be added in the coming weeks. These broadcasts are not only translated A synthetic voice reproduces (more or less) the style and intonation of the animators’ voices.. There is no human dubbing, so we have to trust that the translation skills are correct, otherwise beware of misinterpretations…

The examples provided by Spotify above give a good idea of ​​what to expect: the vocals are very natural, but sometimes a little robotic. The streaming service gives few technical details, except that one of the technologies used is from OpenAI for voice generation. All this is reminiscent of the virtual host of DJ Playlist, which also reproduces the vocal style of the “real” host.

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This is just a first step and Spotify doesn’t hide the fact that they can offer this tool to all podcasters, not just a few stars.

Source:

Spotify