Arabic English Mixed Text to Speech: How to Get Brand Names and Terms Right

01Why Arabic scripts mix in English

Listen to a young professional in Dubai, Riyadh or Beirut and half the work vocabulary is English: the meeting, the deadline, download the app. In advertising it is even more pronounced. Product names, brands and tech terms are usually English, and nobody translates iPhone or Netflix. That mix is natural; strip it out and the script stops sounding like real people.

The trouble starts when a generated voice reads it. An Arabic voice may give the English word an odd accent, spell out an acronym you wanted said as a word, or the reverse. The good news is that most of these issues are fixed in the script itself, before you spend a single credit.

Vocla's Text to speech editor is built to read English words inside Arabic sentences the way your audience usually says them. Rare names and your company's own acronyms still need guidance, which is what the rest of this guide covers.

02Latin or Arabic letters? The golden rule

Write the word the way your audience says it. If people use the English pronunciation, keep it in Latin letters. If the word has become Arabic in everyday use, with a local pronunciation, write it in Arabic script.

Arabic spelling gives you more control because you choose the letters and vowels. Latin spelling gives a more English-sounding result, which suits names your audience already knows in English.

03Teach the voice your brand once with the pronunciation dictionary

If your product or company name appears in every ad, don't fix it in every script. Vocla's pronunciation dictionary works across the whole workspace: enter the word as it appears in the script and how it should sound, and every voice applies it automatically, including designed and cloned voices.

The dictionary holds up to 1,000 entries per workspace, with search and CSV import and export. If you have a long product list, prepare it as a two-column sheet and import it in one go. It is included on every plan; credits are spent only on the audio you generate.

04Acronyms, numbers and links: write them as spoken

In mixed scripts, symbols cause more trouble than English words: a percentage, a price with a currency code, a URL, a promo code. Each has several possible readings, so write them out in words as you want them heard.

• Percentages: instead of خصم 20% write خصم عشرين بالمية for a dialect read, or عشرين في المئة in Fusha.
• Prices: 99 SAR may be read unpredictably; write تسعة وتسعين ريال.
• Links: don't read full URLs. Say visit our website and put the link in the caption or description.
• Promo codes: write the code the way you want it said, for example كود سيف عشرين rather than SAVE20.
• Digits in Arabic sentences: decide whether the number should be said in Arabic or English and spell it out.

Spelling numbers out adds a few characters, and so a few credits, but far fewer than regenerating a mispronounced line. Tashkeel you add to Arabic words, on the other hand, is not counted at all.

05Ready-made lines in three dialects

Note that أونلاين is written in Arabic because it has become part of Lebanese speech, while delivery stays in Latin letters because people usually say it the English way. That is exactly the call you make for each word.

06Test line by line before the full script

1. 1Mark the sensitive lines: any line with an English name, acronym, number or link.
2. 2Generate only those lines: a single line is a few dozen characters, so testing is cheap.
3. 3Listen closely: is the name said the way your audience says it? Is the acronym spelled out or said as a word, as intended?
4. 4Fix in the script or the dictionary: change the spelling, or add the word to the dictionary if it will recur.
5. 5Generate the full script: once the tricky lines are right, run the rest in one pass.
6. 6If a line changes later: regenerate just that line, not the whole file.

For ambiguous Arabic words in the same script, use the word inspector: double-click a word to see and hear its possible readings and pick the right one. That way you control both sides, Arabic and English.

07Where mixed-language TTS still needs a human ear

To be straight with you: no generated voice will say every foreign word perfectly first time. Rare names, words from a third language such as French or Italian, and unfamiliar personal names may need a test or a respelling. That is why line tests and the dictionary matter.

• A full English paragraph: generate it separately with an English voice and join the clips in your editor.
• A very difficult word: write it in Arabic letters exactly as you want it said, with tashkeel if needed.
• A person's name: ask them how they say it rather than guessing.

08Mixed scripts in video captions and phone menus

Code-switching doesn't stop at the audio. If the ad is a video, the on-screen captions will carry the English words too, and that raises a second problem: many caption tools scramble line direction when a Latin word sits inside an Arabic sentence, so words flip or reorder.

Vocla's AI captions and the captions in Vocla Video set Arabic lines right to left with proper letter shaping, in a font that balances Arabic and Latin sizes so mixed lines look even. Still, check every line containing English in the preview before you export, especially when the English word starts or ends the line.

• In video: write the word in the script the way you want it to appear, because captions follow the spoken script.
• In phone menus: for a bilingual audience, two separate prompts, one per language, usually work better than one mixed sentence, so every caller understands the options.
• In dubbing: if the source video is English and full of product names, check each one line by line in the dubbing studio before export.