vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
This version supports IBM Cloud Pak for Data version 4.x and Red Hat OpenShift version 4.6. For more information about installing and managing the service, see [Installing IBM Watson Text to Speech for IBM Cloud Pak for Data](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-speech-install-data).

Enhanced neural voices
: To optimize the overall quality of voice synthesis, all available voices are now enhanced neural voices. Enhanced neural voices, which include the string V3 in their names, are now available for Brazilian Portuguese, United Kingdom and United States English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish (all dialects).

Enhanced neural voices support the use of both IPA and IBM Symbolic Phonetic Representation (SPR) with the SSML <phoneme> element. Enhanced neural voices also achieve a slightly higher degree of natural-sounding speech. For more information, see [Languages and voices](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-voices).

New Canadian French voice
: The service now supports Canadian French with the enhanced neural voice fr-CA_LouiseV3Voice. The Canadian French voice supports customization and is generally available (GA) for production use.



* To hear a sample of the new voice, see [Supported languages and voices](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-voiceslanguage-voices).
* For more information about the phonetic symbols and Unicode values that are available for the Canadian French language, see [French (Canadian) symbols](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-caSymbols).



New Tune by Example feature
: The new Tune by Example feature lets you control how specified text is spoken by the service. The feature is beta functionality that is supported only for US English custom models and voices. The feature has two components:



* Custom prompts include the written text that is to be spoken and recorded audio that speaks the text as you want to hear it.
The new voice is beta functionality pending completion of support for SSML. At its initial release, the voice does not support use of the following SSML-related functionality:



* The <prosody> element with any speech synthesis request
* The rate_percentage and pitch_percentage parameters with any speech synthesis request
* The <mark> element with a WebSocket speech synthesis request
* The timings parameter of the JSON text message with a WebSocket speech synthesis request



For more information about the new voice, its support for IPA and SPR symbols, and migrating to the new voice from the deprecated Netherlands Dutch neural voices, see



* [Enhanced neural voices](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-voiceslanguage-voices-enhanced-neural)
* [Dutch (Netherlands) symbols](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-nlSymbols-new)



New environment variable for Speech services custom resource
: The documentation now includes instructions to create an environment variable named ${CUSTOM_RESOURCE_SPEECH}. You append the new variable to the cpd_vars.sh script, and source the script to use the variable in your environment. For more information, see Information you need to complete this task in [Installing Watson Speech services](https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data/4.6.x?topic=services-installing), or refer to any of the upgrade topics for the Speech services.

Defect fix: French Canadian voice now handles numeric times properly
: Defect fix: The French Canadian voices now pronounce times like 19:41 correctly. Previously, the voices were omitting elements of the time in the synthesized audio.

Defect fix: Japanese voice no longer inserts unexpected audio
: Defect fix: The Japanese voice no longer inserts unexpected audio in speech synthesis results. Previously, additional audio was inserted in certain cases.

Defect fix: Update Korean phonetic symbols in documentation
German (de) GA (except Covid-19) NA NA 
 Italian (it) GA (except Covid-19) NA NA 
 Japanese (ja) GA (except Covid-19) NA NA 
 Korean (ko) NA NA NA 
 Portuguese (Brazilian) (pt-br) GA NA NA 
 Spanish (es) GA NA NA 
 Universal (xx) NA GA GA 







 User input processing support details 



Table 4. User input processing support details

 Language [Dictionary-based entity support](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-entitiesentities-create-dictionary-based) [Fuzzy matching (Misspelling)](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-entitiesentities-fuzzy-matching) [Fuzzy matching (Stemming, Partial match)](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-entitiesentities-fuzzy-matching) [Autocorrection](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-dialog-runtime-spell-check) 

 English (en) GA GA GA GA 
 Arabic (ar) GA GA NA NA 
 Chinese (Simplified) (zh-cn) GA NA NA NA 
 Chinese (Traditional) (zh-tw) GA NA NA NA 
 Czech (cs) GA GA GA NA 
 Dutch (nl) GA GA NA NA 
 French (fr) GA GA GA Beta 
 German (de) GA GA GA NA 
 Italian (it) GA GA NA NA 
 Japanese (ja) GA GA NA NA 
 Korean (ko) GA GA NA NA 
 Portuguese (Brazilian) (pt-br) GA GA NA NA 
 Spanish (es) GA GA NA NA 
 Universal (xx) GA GA NA NA 







 Entity feature support details 



Table 5. Entity feature support details
[French (Canadian)](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelsfrench-canadian) fr [Sinhala](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelssinhala) si 
 [German](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelsgerman) de [Slovak](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelsslovak) sk 
 [Greek](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelsgreek) el [Slovenian](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelsslovenian) sl 
 [Gujarati](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelsgujarati) gu [Spanish](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelsspanish) es 
 [Hebrew](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelshebrew) he [Swedish](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelsswedish) sv 
 [Hindi](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelshindi) hi [Tamil](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelstamil) ta 
 [Hungarian](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelshungarian) hu [Telugu](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelstelugu) te
Tokens are the preferred means for clients to interact with the service.

The service continues to support the old programming model that relied on a server-side proxy to relay communications and data between the client and the service. But the new model is more efficient and provides higher throughput.

New support for the Speech Synthesis Markup Language
: You can now pass Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) to the HTTP GET and POST versions of the /v1/synthesize method. SSML is an XML-based markup language that is designed to provide annotations of text for speech synthesis applications such as the Text to Speech service. For more information about passing SSML input to the service, see [Specifying input text](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-usingHTTPinput).

The service initially supports the use of SSML only for the UK and US English, French, and German languages. The service does not support SSML for use with Italian and Spanish. When you use SSML, make sure that you do not select a voice for the audio in one of the unsupported languages. Results in this case are not meaningful.

Changes to available voices
: The voices that are supported for synthesized speech changed and expanded. The service now supports a number of additional voices, languages, and dialects with the /v1/synthesize methods. For more information about supported voices, see [Languages and voices](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-voices).

The three voices that were available at beta are renamed for GA:



* VoiceEnUsMichael is now en-US_MichaelVoice
* VoiceEnUsLisa is now en-US_LisaVoice
* VoiceEsEsEnrique is now es-ES_EnriqueVoice



The previous names of the voices continue to work with the beta version of the service (via -beta API endpoints) while that version remains available. However, you must use the new names with the GA version of the service.

New support for Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) audio format
Spanish <br>(Castilian) es-ES_Telephony Yes GA 
 Spanish <br>(Argentinian, Chilean, <br>Colombian, Mexican, <br>and Peruvian) es-LA_Telephony Yes GA 
 Swedish sv-SE_Telephony Yes GA 



The Latin American Spanish model, es-LA_Telephony, applies to all Latin American dialects. It is the equivalent of the previous-generation models that are available for the Argentinian, Chilean, Colombian, Mexican, and Peruvian dialects. If you used a previous-generation model for any of these Latin American dialects, use the es-LA_Telephony model to migrate to the equivalent next-generation model.





 Multimedia models 

Table 2 lists the available next-generation multimedia models.



Table 2. Next-generation multimedia models

 Language Model name Low-latency support Status 

 Dutch <br>(Netherlands) nl-NL_Multimedia Yes GA 
 English <br>(Australian) en-AU_Multimedia Yes GA 
 English <br>(United Kingdom) en-GB_Multimedia Yes GA 
 English <br>(United States) en-US_Multimedia Yes GA 
 French <br>(Canadian) fr-CA_Multimedia Yes GA 
 French <br>(France) fr-FR_Multimedia Yes GA 
 German de-DE_Multimedia Yes GA 
 Italian it-IT_Multimedia Yes GA 
 Japanese ja-JP_Multimedia Yes GA 
 Korean ko-KR_Multimedia Yes GA 
 Portuguese <br>(Brazilian) pt-BR_Multimedia Yes GA 
 Spanish <br>(Castilian) es-ES_Multimedia Yes GA 







 The English medical telephony model 

The beta next-generation en-WW_Medical_Telephony understands terms from the medical and pharmacological domains. Use the model in situations where you need to transcribe common medical terminology such as medicine names, product brands, medical procedures, illnesses, types of doctor, or COVID-19-related terminology.

Common use cases include conversations between a patient and a medical provider (for example, a doctor, nurse, or pharmacist):



* My head is hurting. I need an Ibuprofen, please.
* English (United Kingdom): en-UK_NarrowbandModel and en-UK_BroadbandModel
* English (United States): en-US_NarrowbandModel, en-US_BroadbandModel, and en-US_ShortForm_NarrowbandModel
* French (Canadian): fr-CA_NarrowbandModel and fr-CA_BroadbandModel
* French (France): fr-FR_NarrowbandModel and fr-FR_BroadbandModel
* German: de-DE_NarrowbandModel and de-DE_BroadbandModel
* Italian: it-IT_NarrowbandModel and it_IT_BroadbandModel
* Korean: ko-KR_NarrowbandModel and ko-KR_BroadbandModel
* Portuguese (Brazilian): pt-BR_NarrowbandModel and pt-BR_BroadbandModel
* Spanish (Argentinian): es-AR_NarrowbandModel and es-AR_BroadbandModel
* Spanish (Castilian): es-ES_NarrowbandModel and es-ES_BroadbandModel
* Spanish (Chilean): es-CL_NarrowbandModel and es-CL_BroadbandModel
* Spanish (Colombian): es-CO_NarrowbandModel and es-CO_BroadbandModel
* Spanish (Mexican): es-MX_NarrowbandModel and es-MX_BroadbandModel
* Spanish (Peruvian): es-PE_NarrowbandModel and es-PE_BroadbandModel



If you use any of these deprecated models, you must migrate to the equivalent next-generation model by the end of service date.



* For more information about the next-generation models to which you can migrate from each of the deprecated models, see [Previous-generation languages and models](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-models)
* For more information about the next-generation models, see [Next-generation languages and models](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-models-ng)
* Spanish (Colombian): es-CO_NarrowbandModel and es-CO_BroadbandModel
* Spanish (Mexican): es-MX_NarrowbandModel and es-MX_BroadbandModel
* Spanish (Peruvian): es-PE_NarrowbandModel and es-PE_BroadbandModel



If you use any of these deprecated models, you must migrate to the equivalent next-generation model by the end of service date.



* For more information about the next-generation models to which you can migrate from each of the deprecated models, see [Previous-generation languages and models](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-models)
* For more information about the next-generation models, see [Next-generation languages and models](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-models-ng)
* For more information about migrating from previous-generation to next-generation models, see [Migrating to next-generation models](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-models-migrate).



Note: When the previous-generation en-US_BroadbandModel is removed from service on 15 September, the next-generation en-US_Multimedia model will become the default model for speech recognition requests.

Next-generation models now support audio-parsing parameters
: All next-generation models now support the following audio-parsing parameters as generally available features:



* end_of_phrase_silence_time specifies the duration of the pause interval at which the service splits a transcript into multiple final results. For more information, see [End of phrase silence time](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-parsingsilence-time).
* split_transcript_at_phrase_end directs the service to split the transcript into multiple final results based on semantic features of the input.
* English to and from Slovenian (en-sl and sl-en)



New identifiable languages
: The following languages can now be identified by the service:



* Catalan (ca)
* Croatian (hr)
* Irish (ga)
* Malay (ms)
* Maltese (mt)
* Serbian (sr)
* Slovenian (sl)
* Thai (th)







 14 June 2019 

New translation models
: New translation models are now available for English and Greek:



* English to Greek (en-el)
* Greek to English (el-en)







 13 June 2019 

New translation models
: New translation models are now available for English and Hebrew:



* English to Hebrew (en-he)
* Hebrew to English (he-en)







 21 March 2019 

Changes to service credential information
: From March 21 2019, you will see only service credential information associated with the role that has been assigned to your IBM Cloud account. For example, if you have assigned a reader role, any writer or higher levels of service credentials will not be visible.

This change does not affect API access for users or applications with existing service key credentials. Only the viewing of credentials within IBM Cloud is affected.

For more information about service keys and user roles, see [Authenticating to Watson services](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson?topic=watson-iam).





 14 December 2018 

New London location
: You can now create Language Translator service instances in the IBM Cloud London location.





 16 November 2018 

New beta support for document translation
: [Translating documents](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-document-translator-tutorial) is now available through new API endpoints. Submit a Microsoft Office document, PDF, or other document with a supported file format, and Language Translator will provide a translated copy that preserves the original formatting. [Supported file formats](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-document-translator-tutorialsupported-file-formats) include .doc, .ppt, .pdf, and more.
Service features 

You can access the speech synthesis capabilities of the IBM Watson® Text to Speech service via an HTTP or WebSocket interface. Both interfaces provide features that let you submit and receive different information from the service. And as with all Watson services, SDKs are available to simplify application development in many programming languages.



 Using languages and voices 

The service supports speech synthesis with voices for the languages listed in [Language support](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-aboutabout-languages). For different languages, the service offers female voices, male voices, or both. Some languages and voices might be supported for IBM Cloud® only.

All of the service's voices use neural voice technology, which produces more natural-sounding speech. The service offers two types of voices, expressive neural and enhanced neural, which have different qualities and features. For information about the types of voices and about the supported languages and voices for each type, see [Languages and voices](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-voices).





 Using audio formats 

The service can return synthesized audio in the many formats listed in [Audio support](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-aboutabout-formats). For information about the supported audio formats, see [Using audio formats](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-audio-formats).





 Synthesizing speech with the service 

The Text to Speech service offers an HTTP Representational State Transfer (REST) interface and a WebSocket interface:



* [The HTTP interface](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-usingHTTP) provides both GET and POST versions of the service's /v1/synthesize method. The two versions of the method offer generally equivalent functionality.
* POST /v1/customizations/{customization_id}/upgrade_model
* POST /v1/acoustic_customizations/{customization_id}/upgrade_model



For more information, see [Upgrading custom models](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-custom-upgrade).

The customization_id parameter renamed to language_customization_id
: The customization_id parameter of the speech recognition methods is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. To specify a custom language model for a speech recognition request, use the language_customization_id parameter instead. This change applies to the following methods:



* /v1/recognize for WebSocket requests
* POST /v1/recognize for synchronous HTTP requests (including multipart requests)
* POST /v1/recognitions for asynchronous HTTP requests







 10 September 2018 

New German broadband model
: The service now supports a German broadband model, de-DE_BroadbandModel. The new German model supports language model customization (generally available) and acoustic model customization (beta).



* For information about how the service parses corpora for German, see [Parsing of Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-corporaWordscorpusLanguages).
* For more information about creating sounds-like pronunciations for custom words in German, see [Guidelines for Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-corporaWordswordLanguages-esES-frFR).



Language model customization now available for Brazilian Portuguese
: The existing Brazilian Portuguese models, pt-BR_BroadbandModel and pt-BR_NarrowbandModel, now support language model customization (generally available). The models were not updated to enable this support, so no upgrade of existing custom acoustic models is required.
The Tune by Example feature is beta functionality that is supported only for US English custom models and voices.





 Using software development kits 

SDKs are available for the Text to Speech service to simplify the development of speech applications. The SDKs support many popular programming languages and platforms.



* For a complete list of SDKs and links to the SDKs on GitHub, see [Watson SDKs](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=watson-using-sdks).
* For more information about all methods of the SDKs for the Text to Speech service, see the [API & SDK reference](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/text-to-speech).







 Learning more about application development 

For more information about working with Watson services and IBM Cloud:



* For an introduction, see [Getting started with Watson and IBM Cloud](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson?topic=watson-about).
* For information about using IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management, see [Authenticating to Watson services](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson?topic=watson-iam).







 Next steps 

Explore the features introduced in this topic to gain a more in-depth understanding of the service's capabilities. Each feature includes links to topics that describe it in much greater detail.



* [Using languages and voices](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-service-featuresfeatures-languages-voices) and [Using audio formats](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-service-featuresfeatures-audio-formats) describe the basic underpinnings of the service's capabilities. You must choose a language and voice that are suitable for your text and application, and you must understand the characteristics of the audio the service returns.
* Marathi (mr)
* Nepali (ne)
* Punjabi (Shahmukhi script, Pakistan) (pa-PK)
* Sinhala (si)
* Tagalog (tl)





Improved translation results for Catalan and Chinese
: Improved results when translating to and from the following languages:



* Catalan (ca)
* Chinese (Simplified) (zh)



New translation limits for Lite plan
: For service instances on the Lite plan, the Translate document method now has a document size limit of 2 MB. The document size limit for Standard, Advanced, and Premium plans remains 20 MB.





 22 April 2020 

Expanded language translation
: The languages listed in [List of supported languages](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelslist-languages-supported) can be translated to any other language in the list, with the exception of Catalan.

Expanded language support for translation
: Support for translating the following languages is now available:



* Bengali (bn)
* Gujarati (gu)
* Malayalam (ml)
* Maltese (mt)
* Tamil (ta)
* Telugu (te)



Improved translation for English and Hindi
: Improved translation quality for translation between English and Hindi.

Improved translation for Microsoft document types
: Improved document translation performance for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents.





 28 February 2020 

Automatic source language detection in translation requests
: Added automatic source language detection in Translate requests. When you specify a target language without specifying a source language or translation model, the service attempts to identify the source language and continues with the translation. In the results, the service returns the identified language and a score indicating the confidence in the identification.





 30 January 2020 

New translation models
: New translation models are now available:



* English to and from Latvian (en-lv and lv-en)
* English to and from Urdu (en-ur and ur-en)
* English to and from Vietnamese (en-vi and vi-en)