Setting up an Arabic voice
- Record 5 to 15 seconds of a native Arabic speaker. For Modern Standard Arabic narration, record the sample in MSA.
- Set the voice's Language to Arabic.
- Test with a word that's ambiguous without diacritics, a number and a question.
Modern Standard Arabic and dialects
Modern Standard Arabic is the safest choice for narration, education and anything for a pan-Arab audience. The sample's accent colours the delivery, so a speaker from Cairo or the Gulf brings some of that sound even in MSA. Scripts written in a dialect, such as Egyptian or Levantine, are less predictable, because dialects have no fixed spelling; test them with a native listener before committing.
Diacritics for ambiguous words
Arabic is usually written without short vowels, and readers fill them in from context. Some words are genuinely ambiguous:
| Without | Could be |
|---|---|
| علم | عِلْم (knowledge), عَلَم (flag), عَلَّمَ (taught) |
| كتب | كُتُب (books), كَتَبَ (wrote) |
You don't need to vocalize the whole script. Add diacritics to the words that come out wrong, and to names, and generate again.
Writing Arabic for the voice
- Numbers as words: digits, whether ٢٠٢٦ or 2026, leave the case and gender to chance. Write ألفان وستة وعشرون, and match the gender of numbers to their nouns.
- Arabic punctuation: use ، and ؟. Long lines are split at ؟ as well as full stops.
- Latin-script words in a right-to-left script can display out of order in some editors and read unpredictably; write names and brands in Arabic letters where you can.
- Abbreviations such as د. (Doctor) or م. (AD) are best written in full.
- Speaker names for pasted dialogue go first, then an ordinary colon:
Layla: ...or ليلى:.
A passage to record
كنتُ أرغب في تسجيل هذا منذ أسابيع، فلنبدأ إذن. إنها أمسية هادئة، والقهوة جاهزة، وأخيرًا لديّ بضع دقائق لنفسي. لنرَ كيف
يبدو الصوت.
"I've wanted to record this for weeks, so let's begin. It's a quiet evening, the coffee's ready, and at last I have a few minutes to myself. Let's see how it sounds."
A dialogue to test with
ليلى: هل وصلتَ؟ أنا أنتظرك منذ الثامنة.
سامي: آسف! كانت الطرق مزدحمة جدًا.
ليلى: لا بأس، المهم أنك هنا. هل نطلب الآن؟
Review
Have a native speaker, ideally from your target region, listen to every line. Automatic checks catch skipped words, not a wrong vowel or an out-of-place register.