Bilingual IVR in Arabic and English: Which Language Goes First, and How to Build the Menu

01Bilingual IVR in Arabic and English: which language first?

Every clinic, courier and bank in the Gulf asks it: should the phone menu start in Arabic or English? The honest answer depends on who calls you, not on the language of your head office or website. Pull your call logs or ask reception what share of callers open in Arabic. That number decides the order better than any opinion.

Whatever the order, one rule holds: callers must learn how to reach their language within a few seconds. Twenty seconds of Arabic before an English speaker hears an option is twenty seconds of them mashing zero or hanging up. Put the language option straight after the welcome line and before the main menu.

02Three language-selection patterns, with scripts

Pattern one, the most common: a short Arabic welcome, an English option spoken in English, then the Arabic menu for anyone who presses nothing. Arabic callers never wait, and everyone else hears one sentence in their language within five seconds.

Pattern two: a brief double greeting, then the choice. It suits businesses with evenly split callers, such as hotels and airlines. Keep each half to a single sentence.

Pattern three: a separate number per language. If you run one line for local customers and another for international ones, skip the selection step altogether. Publish the English number on your English site and emails, the Arabic one in Arabic ads, and every caller lands in their language.

The MSA line reads “For Arabic press one, for English press two”; the Saudi version says “If you want to continue in Arabic press 1” and then switches to English for the second option, which is how many Gulf menus actually sound.

03One voice persona across both languages

Nothing makes a bilingual IVR feel stitched together faster than a calm female voice in Arabic handing over to a brisk male voice in English. Callers feel they've been transferred to another company. Your brand's voice shouldn't change with the language, and the same goes for your ads and videos.

Vocla gives you two ways to keep one persona. The first is a cloned brand voice: record a clean sample of a spokesperson who has given written consent, and Vocla builds a private voice that reads Arabic and English scripts, so callers hear the same person in both. Voice cloning is on paid plans: one clone on Starter, five on Professional. The second is a matched pair from the library: an Arabic and an English voice of the same gender, similar age, and similar tone and pace.

• Gender and age: don't jump from a young voice to a much older one.
• Pace: set the speed in both languages so the menu keeps the same rhythm.
• Tone: if the Arabic is warm, don't make the English stiff and formal.
• Business name: say it the same way in both; add it to the pronunciation dictionary once.

04Mirror the menus and keep them shallow

Rule two, after the voice: the Arabic and English menus are mirrors. Same options, same order, same digits. If booking is 1 in Arabic, it's 1 in English. Staff can explain the route to any customer, and your technical team builds and maintains one structure instead of two.

Language selection is itself an extra level, so go lighter after it: four options at most on the main menu plus 0 for an agent, and one sub-menu level only if you must. A caller who has pressed for language, then the menu, then a sub-menu, then another, often hangs up before arriving.

Make sure the agent who answers the English branch actually speaks English. If you can't staff English at all hours, say so in the English after-hours message and offer an alternative such as email or your app. General menu-writing rules are in our IVR script guide.

05A complete bilingual prompt set

Here is a set for a fictional UAE courier, Emirati Arabic first, then an English branch written as natural English rather than a word-for-word translation:

Key 2 is reserved for language selection in the Arabic menu, so the options keep identical digits in both branches. If you prefer consecutive numbering, put language on 9 instead; what matters is that it never moves. And a Saudi hold message with its English twin:

Often the most important English prompt is after hours, because a non-Arabic caller can't ask anyone about opening times. State the days and hours clearly, and what they can do right now instead of waiting. Its Emirati twin carries the same information in the same order:

06Generate the files and name them by language

No script yet? Enter your business name, options in order and opening hours in the IVR script builder, pick a dialect, and copy the welcome, menu, hold and after-hours prompts. Then do the same in English for the second branch.

1. 1One file per prompt per language: never merge welcome and menu, so you can change either alone.
2. 2Name files clearly: ar-welcome.wav and en-welcome.wav, ar-menu-main.wav and en-menu-main.wav, or a folder per language.
3. 3Download WAV: WAV is on paid plans and MP3 on every plan, both at 24 kHz.
4. 4Convert for telephony: ffmpeg -i ar-welcome.wav -ar 8000 -ac 1 -acodec pcm_s16le ar-welcome-8k.wav
5. 5Use µ-law or A-law if your system asks: ffmpeg -i ar-welcome.wav -ar 8000 -ac 1 -acodec pcm_alaw ar-welcome-alaw.wav
6. 6Upload: place each file at its step in the call flow and check the English branch plays only English files.

07Test with real callers, then update in minutes

Before going live, have two or three people call from their own phones: one who speaks only Arabic, one only English, one both. Give each a task, such as “change your delivery slot”, and note how many seconds it takes and where they hesitate.

• Did the non-Arabic speaker find English within five seconds?
• Do both voices sound like the same company?
• Do the same digits lead to the same option in both languages?
• Did the English branch reach an English-speaking agent?
• Is the audio still clear on a mobile after conversion to 8 kHz?

When something changes, such as Ramadan hours or a new branch, edit the line in both languages, regenerate both files with the same voice and settings, convert and upload. No studio booking and no waiting for an English voice actor. A full bilingual set of short prompts usually fits within Starter at $4.99 a month, which includes commercial rights and WAV export.

Business names in these scripts (Al Riyada Medical Centre, Al Marsa Hotel, Najma Delivery) are fictional. The Free plan has no commercial rights, so live phone prompts need a paid plan. If your sector has regulatory requirements on language or wording, check them with your compliance team.