Languages & Voices
A HANC agent speaks 25 languages with regional accents and can switch language in the middle of a call. This page covers which languages are available and the settings that control them.
Available languages
16 languages are generally available:
| Code | Language | Code | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
de-DE | German (Germany) | nl-NL | Dutch |
de-AT | German (Austria) | pl-PL | Polish |
de-CH | German (Switzerland) | pt-PT | Portuguese (Portugal) |
en-GB | English (UK) | sv-SE | Swedish |
en-US | English (US) | ar-SA | Arabic (Saudi Arabia) |
fr-FR | French | ar-AE | Arabic (UAE) |
it-IT | Italian | ar-EG | Arabic (Egypt) |
es-ES | Spanish (Spain) | ru-RU | Russian |
9 languages are in beta: uk-UA Ukrainian, bg-BG Bulgarian, ro-RO Romanian, el-GR Greek, hu-HU Hungarian, kk-KZ Kazakh, az-AZ Azerbaijani, be-BY Belarusian, hy-AM Armenian.
Before putting an agent in front of customers, test it with a few real calls in its language — especially for beta languages.
Switching language during a call
Settings → Voice → Language sets the language of the greeting. After that the agent follows the caller: if the caller answers in another language, the agent continues in that language.
- One language. If all your callers speak one language, set it as the only speech-recognition language (below), so the agent listens for that language only.
- Several languages. Leave speech recognition on auto-detect or list the languages you expect — the agent greets in its own language and switches to the caller's.
Speech-recognition languages
Settings → Voice → Speech Recognition Languages tells the agent which languages to listen for.
| Setting | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Speech Recognition Languages | Up to 10 languages for speech recognition | Empty — auto-detect |
- Leave the field empty and the agent detects the language itself.
- Pick languages when you know who calls: for example, a German business that also serves English and Turkish speakers.
- For best performance, use no more than 2 recognition languages; the dashboard warns you when you pick more.
The visitor's language on web calls
Follow the visitor's language is a switch on the Model tab. When it is on, the agent greets and listens in the language the visitor's browser is set to on web calls. If that language is not available, the agent falls back to English, then to its own language.
The greeting is translated in advance. Under the switch you see how many languages it is ready in; when you change the greeting, the translations become out of date and Translate refreshes them.
Voices
The voice is picked on the Settings tab under Voice. The picker groups voices by provider, with a preview for each; you can also bring your own voices from HancVoice. Volume and speed are set right below. See Voice settings.
Related
- Settings — voice, call behaviour, post-call analysis
- Website Widgets — web calls from your site
- Prompt Engineering — writing prompts for multilingual agents