vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Korean GA ko-KR_JinV3Voice <br>Female Your browser does not support the audio tag. 
 Portuguese <br>(Brazilian) GA pt-BR_IsabelaV3Voice <br>Female Your browser does not support the audio tag. 
 Spanish <br>(Castilian) GA es-ES_EnriqueV3Voice <br>Male Your browser does not support the audio tag. 
 GA es-ES_LauraV3Voice <br>Female Your browser does not support the audio tag. 
 Spanish <br>(Latin American) GA es-LA_SofiaV3Voice <br>Female Your browser does not support the audio tag. 
 Spanish <br>(North American) GA es-US_SofiaV3Voice <br>Female Your browser does not support the audio tag. 



The Spanish Latin American and North American Sofia voices are essentially the same voice. The most significant difference concerns how the two voices interpret a $ (dollar sign). The Latin American version uses the term pesos; the North American version uses the term dólares. Other minor differences might also exist between the two voices.







 Creating a custom model 

When you synthesize text, the service applies language-dependent pronunciation rules to convert the ordinary spelling of each word to a phonetic spelling. The service's pronunciation rules work well for common words, but they can yield imperfect results for unusual words, such as terms with foreign origins, personal names, and abbreviations or acronyms. If your application's lexicon includes such words, you can use the customization interface to specify how the service pronounces them.

A custom model is a dictionary of words and their translations. You create a custom model for a specific language, not for a specific voice. So a custom model can be used with any voice for its specified language. For example, a custom model that you create for the en-US language can be used with any US English voice. It cannot, however, be used with an en-GB or en-AU voice.

Customization is available for all languages. All voices support the use of both standard International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and IBM Symbolic Phonetic Representation (SPR) phonetic symbols for word customization.
This version supports IBM Cloud Pak for Data versions 3.5 and 3.0.1, and Red Hat OpenShift versions 4.5 and 3.11.

New Australian and French Canadian models
: The service now offers broadband and narrowband models for Australian English and Canadian French:



* Australian English: en-AU_BroadbandModel and en-AU_NarrowbandModel
* Canadian French: fr-CA_BroadbandModel and fr-CA_NarrowbandModel



The new models are generally available, and they support both language model and acoustic model customization.



* For more information about supported languages and models, see [Previous-generation languages and models](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-models).
* For more information about language support for customization, see [Language support for customization](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-custom-support).



Updated models for improved speech recognition
: The following language models have been updated for improved speech recognition:



* Brazilian Portuguese: pt-BR_BroadbandModel and pt-BR_NarrowbandModel
* French: fr-FR_BroadbandModel
* German: de-DE_BroadbandModel and de-DE_NarrowbandModel
* Japanese: ja-JP_BroadbandModel
* UK English: en-GB_BroadbandModel and en-GB_NarrowbandModel
* US English: en-US_ShortForm_NarrowbandModel



By default, the service automatically uses the updated models for all speech recognition requests. If you have custom language or custom acoustic models that are based on these models, you must upgrade your existing custom models to take advantage of the updates by using the following methods:



* 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).
Usage FAQs 

FAQs for IBM Watson® Text to Speech include questions about speech synthesis, supported languages, audio formats, and other topics. To find all FAQs for IBM Cloud®, see the [FAQ library](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/faqs).



 How do I access my service credentials? 

How you access your service credentials depends on whether you are using Text to Speech with IBM Cloud® or IBM Cloud Pak® for Data. For more information about obtaining your credentials for both versions, see [Before you begin](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-gettingStartedgetting-started-before-you-begin) in the getting started tutorial.

Once you have your service credentials, see the following topics for information about authenticating to the service:



* [Authenticating to IBM Cloud](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson?topic=watson-iamgs-credential-cloud)
* [Authenticating to IBM Cloud Pak for Data](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson?topic=watson-iamgs-credential-cpd)







 What languages does the service support? 

The Text to Speech service supports male and female voices in various spoken languages:



* The service offers expressive neural voices for English (Australian and United States).
* The services offers enhanced neural voices for Dutch Netherlands, English (United Kingdom and United States), French (Canadian and France), German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian), and Spanish (Castilian, Latin American, and North American).



Some languages and voices are available only for IBM Cloud®, not for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data. For more information about the available voices for all languages, see [Languages and voices](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-voices).





 How does the service synthesize audio? 

The Text to Speech service offers voices that rely on neural technology to synthesize text to speech. The topic of synthesizing text to speech is inherently complex.
* English to Danish (en-da)



* Finnish



* Finnish to English (fi-en)
* English to Finnish (en-fi)



* Hindi



* Hindi to English (hi-en)
* English to Hindi (en-hi)



* Swedish



* Swedish to English (sv-en)
* English to Swedish (en-sv)









 15 June 2018 

New support for IBM Cloud IAM
: As of 15 June 2018, new service instances created in the Germany and US South regions use [Identity and Access Management (IAM) authentication](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-release-notesiam-auth-process).

New service instances that you create in Germany and US South will not be compatible with Language Translator v2. If you use Language Translator v2 and are planning to use new service instances in your application, migrate to the v3 API.





 12 June 2018 

Version 3 of the service is now available
: Language Translator v3 is now available. The v2 Language Translator API will no longer be available after July 31, 2018. To take advantage of the latest service enhancements, migrate to the v3 API.

New features in version 3
: Version 3 includes the following new features:



* Language Translator API v3 comes with Neural Machine Translation (NMT) models that offer significantly improved translation results. All NMT models are now available for customization.
* Use custom models as base models for forced glossary customization.
* API v3 is a simplified, all-JSON subset of the retired API v2.
* Introduces API version dates to give developers the freedom to adopt future API changes at their own pace.



Breaking changes in version 3
: Version 3 includes the following breaking changes:



* Mandatory version date for all API endpoints: API v3 requests require a version date query parameter of the form version=YYYY-MM-DD. The latest API version is version=2018-05-01.
* Simplified API:



* The Translate and Identify methods do not offer the option to return plain text responses in v3. The methods return only JSON responses.
* Italian: [stopwords_it.txt](https://github.com/apache/lucene/blob/main/lucene/analysis/common/src/resources/org/apache/lucene/analysis/snowball/italian_stop.txt)
* Norwegian (both supported dialects): [stopwords_no.txt](https://github.com/apache/lucene/blob/main/lucene/analysis/common/src/resources/org/apache/lucene/analysis/snowball/norwegian_stop.txt)
* Portuguese: [stopwords_pt.txt](https://github.com/apache/lucene/blob/main/lucene/analysis/common/src/resources/org/apache/lucene/analysis/snowball/portuguese_stop.txt)
* Romanian: [stopwords_ro.txt](https://github.com/apache/lucene/blob/main/lucene/analysis/common/src/resources/org/apache/lucene/analysis/ro/stopwords.txt)
* Russian: [stopwords_ru.txt](https://github.com/apache/lucene/blob/main/lucene/analysis/common/src/resources/org/apache/lucene/analysis/snowball/russian_stop.txt)
* Spanish: [stopwords_es.txt](https://github.com/apache/lucene/blob/main/lucene/analysis/common/src/resources/org/apache/lucene/analysis/snowball/spanish_stop.txt)
* Swedish: [stopwords_sv.txt](https://github.com/apache/lucene/blob/main/lucene/analysis/common/src/resources/org/apache/lucene/analysis/snowball/swedish_stop.txt)
The name that is specified for the skill (main skill) is a hardcoded name that is used to refer to any skill that you create from the product user interface. You do not need to edit your skill name.

<script>
function preSendhandler(event) {
event.data.context.skills['main skill'].user_defined.ismember = true;
}
window.watsonAssistantChatOptions = {
integrationID: "YOUR_INTEGRATION_ID",
region: "YOUR_REGION",
serviceInstanceID: "YOUR_SERVICE_INSTANCE_ID",

onLoad: function(instance) {
// Subscribe to the "pre:send" event.
instance.on({ type: "pre:send", handler: preSendhandler });
instance.render();
}
};

setTimeout(function(){
const t=document.createElement('script');
t.src='https://web-chat.global.assistant.watson.appdomain.cloud/loadWatsonAssistantChat.js';
document.head.appendChild(t);});

</script>
Show more

You can reference the $ismember context variable from your dialog. For example, the following screen capture shows a dialog node that conditions on #General_Greetings. It has multiple conditioned responses. The first response checks whether the current user is a member of your Rewards Program by checking for the presence of the $ismember context variable. If the variable is present, the response addresses the user as a member. The next response has a more generic greeting.

![Shows multiple conditioned responses in a dialog node, one of which references the ismember context variable](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/a2b18c153837bce00a5b4de496e4b4ca64bbf56e/assistant-data/images/web-chat-use-context-var.png)
The service now also supports the Ogg audio format with the Vorbis codec in addition to the Opus codec. For more information about supported audio formats, see [Using audio formats](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-audio-formats).

New support for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing
: The service now supports Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) to allow browser-based clients to call the service directly. For more information, see [Leveraging CORS support](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-service-featuresfeatures-cors).

Changes to successful HTTP response codes
: The HTTP response codes for successful completion of some methods of the customization interface changed:



* The POST /v1/customizations method now returns 201 (instead of 200).
* The POST /v1/customizations/{customization_id} method now returns 200 (instead of 201).
* The POST /v1/customizations/{customization_id}/words method now returns 200 (instead of 201).
* The PUT /v1/customizations/{customization_id}/words/{word} method now returns 200 (instead of 201).



New errors for misuse of Japanese part_of_speech parameter
: The POST /v1/customizations/{custom_id}/words and PUT /v1/customizations/{customization_id}/words/{word} methods now return HTTP response code 400 with the error message Part of speech is supported for ja-JP language only if you attempt to specify a part_of_speech for a language other than Japanese.

Changes to response body for adding words method
: The POST /v1/customizations/{custom_id}/words method now returns an empty response body ({}).





 1 December 2016 

New Latin American Spanish voice: es-LA_SofiaVoice
: The service includes a new voice, es-LA_SofiaVoice, which is the Latin American equivalent of the es-US_SofiaVoice voice.
: The max_alternatives parameter instructs the service to return the n-best alternative hypotheses for the audio transcription. The POST /v1/recognize and WebSocket /v1/recognize methods support the parameter. For more information, see [Maximum alternatives](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-metadatamax-alternatives).

New word_confidence parameter for speech recognition
: The word_confidence parameter instructs the service to return a confidence score for each word of the transcription. The POST /v1/recognize and WebSocket /v1/recognize methods support the parameter. For more information, see [Word confidence](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-metadataword-confidence).

New timestamps parameter for speech recognition
: The timestamps parameter instructs the service to return the beginning and ending time relative to the start of the audio for each word of the transcription. The POST /v1/recognize and WebSocket /v1/recognize methods support the parameter. For more information, see [Word timestamps](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-metadataword-timestamps).

Renamed sessions method for observing results
: The GET /v1/sessions/{session_id}/observeResult method is now named GET /v1/sessions/{session_id}/observe_result. The name observeResult is still supported for backward compatibility.

New support for Waveform Audio File (WAV) audio format
: The Content-Type header of the recognize methods now supports audio/wav for Waveform Audio File (WAV) files, in addition to audio/flac and audio/l16. For more information, see [audio/wav format](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-audio-formatsaudio-formats-wav).

Limits on maximum amount of audio for speech recognition
* For more information about the status of grammar support for next-generation models, see [Customization support for next-generation models](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-custom-supportcustom-language-support-ng).
* For more information about grammars, see [Grammars](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-customizationgrammars-intro).







 15 March 2022 (Version 4.0.6) 

Important: Deprecation of most previous-generation models
: Superseded: This deprecation notice is superseded by the [23 February 2023 service update](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-release-notes-dataspeech-to-text-data-23february2023). The end of service date for all previous-generation models is now 31 July 2023.

Effective 15 March 2022, previous-generation models for all languages other than Arabic and Japanese are deprecated. The deprecated models remain available until 15 September 2022, when they will be removed from the service and the documentation. The Arabic and Japanese previous-generation models are not deprecated.

The following previous-generation models are now deprecated:



* Chinese (Mandarin): zh-CN_NarrowbandModel and zh-CN_BroadbandModel
* Dutch (Netherlands): nl-NL_NarrowbandModel and nl-NL_BroadbandModel
* English (Australian): en-AU_NarrowbandModel and en-AU_BroadbandModel
* 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
Some languages and voices are available only for IBM Cloud®, not for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data. For more information about the available voices for all languages, see [Languages and voices](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-voices).





 How does the service synthesize audio? 

The Text to Speech service offers voices that rely on neural technology to synthesize text to speech. The topic of synthesizing text to speech is inherently complex. For more information, see



* [Languages and voices](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-voices)
* [The science behind the service](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-science)







 What are the output audio formats? 

By default, the Text to Speech service returns audio in Ogg format with the Opus codec (audio/ogg;codecs=opus). The service supports many other audio formats to suit your application needs. For more information, see [Supported audio formats](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-audio-formatsformats-supported).





 How do I convert my text to speech? 

To submit text to the service for synthesized audio output, you make an HTTP or WebSocket request. You can use the API directly or use one of the Watson SDKs. [Getting started](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-gettingStarted) offers examples of both the HTTP POST /v1/synthesize and GET /v1/synthesize methods. The [API & SDK reference](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/text-to-speech) shows examples of all interfaces and methods.

There is no graphical user interface for submitting text.
: The word_confidence parameter is now supported as beta functionality for use with all next-generation languages and models. For more information, see [Word confidence](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-metadataword-confidence).

Defect fix: Update documentation for next-generation models
: Defect fix: The documentation has been updated to correct the following information:



* When you use a next-generation model for speech recognition, final transcription results now include the confidence field. The field was always included in final transcription results when you use a previous-generation model. This fix addresses a limitation that was reported for the 12 April 2021 release of the next-generation models.
* The documentation incorrectly stated that using the smart_formatting parameter causes the service to remove hesitation markers from final transcription results for Japanese. Smart formatting does not remove hesitation markers from final results for Japanese, only for US English. For more information, see [What results does smart formatting affect?](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-formattingsmart-formatting-effects)







 27 April 2021 

New beta Arabic and Brazilian Portuguese next-generation models
: The service supports two new beta next-generation models:



* The Brazilian Portuguese pt-BR_Telephony model, which supports low latency.
* The Arabic (Modern Standard ) ar-MS_Telephony model, which does not support low latency.



For more information, see [Next-generation languages and models](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-models-ng).

Updates to beta Castilian Spanish next-generation model for improved speech recognition
: The beta next-generation Castilian Spanish es-ES_Telephony model now supports the low_latency parameter. For more information, see [Low latency](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-interimlow-latency).

New beta support for speaker labels with next-generation models
* JSONArray.addAll(JSONArray)
* JSONArray.containsIgnoreCase(value)
* String.equals(String)
* String.equalsIgnoreCase(String)



For more information, see [Expression language methods](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-dialog-methods).





 17 December 2020 

Accessibility improvements
: The product was updated to provide enhanced accessibility features.





 14 December 2020 

Increased Phone and SMS with Twilio integrations availability
: These beta SMS and voice capabilities are now available from service instances that are hosted in Seoul, Tokyo, London, and Sydney.

Improved JSON editor
: The JSON editor in the dialog skill was updated. The editor now uses JSON syntax highlighting and allows you to expand and collapse objects.

Connect to agent from actions skill
: The actions skill now supports transferring a customer to an agent from within an action step. For more information, see [Deciding what to do next](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-actionsactions-what-next).





 4 December 2020 

Introducing more service desk options for web chat
: When you deploy your assistant by using the web chat integration, there are now reference implementations that you can use for the following service desks:



* Twilio Flex
* Genesys Cloud



Alternatively, you can bring your own service desk by using the service desk extension starter kit.

For more information, see [Adding service desk support](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-deploy-web-chatdeploy-web-chat-haa).

Autolearning has been moved and improved
: Go to the Analytics>Autolearning page to enable the feature and see visualizations that illustrate how autolearning impacts your assistant's performance over time. For more information, see [Empower your skill to learn automatically](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-autolearn).

Search from actions skill
: Added the following translation models for Montenegrin:



* Montenegrin to English (cnr-en)
* English to Montenegrin (en-cnr)



Montenegrin cannot be identified by the service's language identification feature. (Bosnian, Croatian, and Montenegrin translation support is based on the Latin alphabet. Of the three very similar languages, only Croatian is identifiable.) The cnr-en and en-cnr translation models are not customizable at this time. For more information, see [List of supported languages](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-modelslist-languages-supported).





 16 September 2020 

Beta support for subtitle (caption) documents
: Added beta support for translation of the following subtitle (caption) document formats:



* SubRip: .srt
* SubViewer: .sbv
* DirectVobSub or VSFilter: .sub
* MicroDVD: .sub
* WebVTT: .vtt



These textual formats contain the transcript of a sound track or video source. For more information about the formats and the characteristics of subtitle translation, see [Supported subtitle formats](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-document-translator-tutorialsupported-file-formats-subtitles).





 14 August 2020 

New translation models
: Added the following translation models:



* Bosnian to English (bs-en) and English to Bosnian (en-bs). Bosnian cannot be identified by the service's language identification feature.
* Canadian French to English (fr-CA-en) and English to Canadian French (en-fr-CA). Canadian French cannot be identified by the service's language identification feature.
* English to Welsh (en-cy). (The cy-en model was already available.)
* Serbian to English (sr-en) and English to Serbian (en-sr). Serbian translation support is based on the Cyrillic alphabet. (Bosnian and Croatian translation support is based on the Latin alphabet.)