Multiple languages for speech to text

[Petit_Pinson]

Hi all,

I just got a Galaxy A52s (2021), running on Android 11. My previous phone, an A40, was able to recognise which language I was speaking in (out of the languages selected & installed in settings), but the A52s doesn't seem to be able to do this. When I want to do speech to text, I have to tap on the space bar until I get to the language I want to speak in and then speak, otherwise it just defaults to English every time and writes mangled rubbish. Can anyone tell me how to change the settings so that it automatically detects which language I'm speaking, please?

[Northerner]

Hi @Petit_Pinson 

Go to settings - general management and add your language or change the default unter text to speech. You might be able to change the engine from Samsung to Google which might help. 

Thanks 

[Petit_Pinson]

Hi @Northerner 

I've tried that, but it will only accept one language at a time, whereas the A40 accepted multiple languages. So I can choose any language, but I have to signal in advance which one I want. I've tried both Samsung and Google but the setting under that for the text to speech is still only showing the option to select one language at a time.

So, on the A40, I just press the little microphone and speak, and it will decide which of the installed languages I'm speaking, or even if I switch mid-sentence, and give a sensible attempt at the text in those languages. But with the A52s, it looks like I have to tell it which language I'm going to be speaking in for every individual instance of using speech to text, and it can't cope if I switch languages without switching the settings. I'm sure there must be some way to solve this, because they surely can't have made the newer model of phone worse than the older one?! But I just can't figure out what to do, there doesn't seem to be any way in settings to have multiple input languages for voice.

[Petit_Pinson]

Just to say, if anyone else has this problem, I found the fix here: https://www.urtech.ca/2020/12/solved-how-to-fix-samsung-galaxy-voice-text-bad-quality/

It's not enough to switch the settings from Samsung voice to Google, which I'd already done, there's a separate bit of the settings where you have to uncheck the Samsung voice app (under 'Keyboard list and default' rather than 'text to speech output') so that it will actually use the Google one. Then with Google you have the usual features like multiple languages supported, learns from previous text, ability to download language packs to use offline etc. Basically the Google service is as good as it was on the previous phone, but it's quite tricky to find out how to default to it.

[Christopher_G]

Thank you for sharing that, @PetitPinson.

Chris