Multilingual Voicemail Transcription

[csa452109]

We have been using the Voicemail Transcription feature in 3CX via the Google Speech API and it's been working great in English, however about half our callers speak Spanish, and because there is only one language option in the Settings the API is attempting to transcribe their Spanish words into English, which ends up sending a string of nonsensical and sometimes vulgar words along with their voicemail. The Google Speech API documentation shows that it's possible for Google to autodetect the spoken language, but a list of languages has to be presented at the time the API call is made, and 3CX only has one language option in their transcription settings.

Is there any way to utilize the Google Speech API within 3CX so that it can transcribe both English and Spanish? I thought about creating an IVR to split the callers somehow, but it looks like the transcription settings in 3CX are for the whole server. Without being able to accommodate Spanish speakers we've had to disable the feature entirely. Any ideas would be appreciated!

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Hi,

Try switching the language to Spanish and check again. It should autodetect English when English is spoken, and still do Spanish when Spanish is spoken.

 

[csa452109]

Hi,

Try switching the language to Spanish and check again. It should autodetect English when English is spoken, and still do Spanish when Spanish is spoken.

Hi John... I changed the language to Spanish (Mexico) in 3CX settings and left a voicemail in English, and predictably it tried to transcribe the English into Spanish words. Is there something that needs to be done on the Google end to get it working in the way you described above? Thanks

 

[JohnS_3CX]

There are a few variations of Spanish, try "Spanish(United States)" and let me know

 

[csa452109]

There are a few variations of Spanish, try "Spanish(United States)" and let me know

Thanks for the follow up... I've tried all versions of Spanish including "Spanish (Spain)" and "Spanish (United States)"... the behavior is still the same. For example, when I set to "Spanish (United States)" and left a voicemail saying "Testing... this is a test of the transcription", I get "casting escuchaste transcription" as the transcribed text in the 3CX notification.

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Ah it was worth a try, but I guess they may have been a fluke (happened to work when tested in the past by chance)

At the moment the system only allows you to select a single language, so unfortunately I don't think you will be able to get both done.

 

[csa452109]

Thanks for following up... it looks like I have insufficient privileges to post in the "Ideas" forum but I'd like to suggest this for a future update...

Ours is one of the many places around the world where more than one language is spoken and the Google Speech-to-Text API does seem to support automatic language detection (https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/docs/multiple-languages) - though it's still in beta so I understand why 3CX might not want to implement it yet. If it does get released as part of the official API it would be great to see an implementation of this!

Because the demand for transcription is still there, but the nonsense transcriptions are unacceptable to our client, we're now having to consider abandoning 3CX voicemail altogether and forwarding callers to a custom Twilio IVR instead that does support this, which is a bit of a headache. We would really love to keep everything on 3CX.