My voice learnt to speak seven new languages overnight

With the release of ElevenLabs’ new multi-lingual speech model, the existing clone I had made of my own voice, can now speak seven new languages.

First let me show you the English-language clone that I think sounds pretty close to my voice.

The seven new languages

French

German

Italian

Spanish

Portuguese

Polish

Hindi

I put this one last because it was the most mind-blowing. I can’t even describe how strange it is to listen to your own voice speaking such a foreign language.

What’s it good for?

Reaching more people

While English is widely spoken around the world, it’s not universally spoken.

The last Census of India, which took place in 2011, showed that only 10.6% spoke English, while 57.1% spoke Hindi. If I dubbed my own YouTube videos with my own voice speaking Hindi, I would be able to reach almost 6x the audience in India.

Likewise, according to Ethnologue, there are 214 million Spanish speakers and 211 million Portuguese speakers in South America. And only around 7 million English speakers.

Cheating on homework assignments

I remember back in middle school getting assignments to record German and upload it to my teacher. This could have saved me from embarrassment.

Okay, that would have been a bad idea, but it could prove useful to hear proper pronunciation. You get to hear not just the correct way to say a word or a sentence, but the way you should be saying it.

Evaluating quality

Unfortunately I don’t any other languages than English and Danish. So I rely on you, my reader, to tell me if it sounds okay. The English version is good, so I’m assuming the others are also pretty good.

That concludes my blog post.