---
title: Languages
description: "The Language setting decides how callers are transcribed and which voices are offered. The 25 languages available and how multilingual calls behave."
---

**Language** in the **General** card of **Settings** is the agent's working
language. On voice agents it decides how the caller's speech is transcribed and
which voices the picker shows. On text agents it sets the language the agent is
expected to answer in.

:::note[Up to two languages]
An agent can have up to two languages, in order. The first is the **Primary**
language and is used first. With two selected, the setting reads **Multilingual**
and the voice picker shows only multilingual voices, since a voice has to speak both.
:::

## Configuring it

1. Open the agent on **Settings**.
2. In **General**, open **Language** and pick an entry. Each shows the name and its
   locale code, for example **English (US) (en-US)**.
3. To add a second language, pick another. The app allows two at most; **Make
   primary** on the second swaps their order.
4. On a voice agent, the voice selector next to it refreshes to voices that speak
   what you picked; with two languages, only multilingual voices remain. Pick one.
5. **Save**.

![The Language menu.](/media/build/language-select.webp)

## Available languages

| Language | Locales |
|---|---|
| Arabic | UAE (`ar-AE`), Egypt (`ar-EG`), Morocco (`ar-MA`), Saudi Arabia (`ar-SA`), Tunisia (`ar-TN`) |
| Chinese | Mandarin, Simplified (`zh-CN`) |
| Dutch | Netherlands (`nl-NL`) |
| English | Australia (`en-AU`), UK (`en-GB`), US (`en-US`) |
| French | Canada (`fr-CA`), France (`fr-FR`) |
| German | Germany (`de-DE`) |
| Hindi | India (`hi-IN`) |
| Italian | Italy (`it-IT`) |
| Japanese | Japan (`ja-JP`) |
| Korean | Korea (`ko-KR`) |
| Persian | Iran (`fa-IR`) |
| Polish | Poland (`pl-PL`) |
| Portuguese | Brazil (`pt-BR`), Portugal (`pt-PT`) |
| Russian | Russia (`ru-RU`) |
| Spanish | Spain (`es-ES`), Mexico (`es-MX`) |
| Turkish | Turkey (`tr-TR`) |

25 locales in total. The voice picker's **Language** filter uses the same list.

## Behaviour and limits

- **Transcription follows the setting.** A caller who speaks another language is
  transcribed as if they spoke the agent's language, and the result is noise. Pick
  the language your callers use, not the one your team writes the prompt in.
- **The prompt can be in any language.** The model reads English instructions and
  answers in French if the identity says so and the voice supports it.
- **Regional variants matter for voices** more than for transcription: `fr-CA` and
  `fr-FR` transcribe alike but offer different voices.
- **Answering machine detection** works in every language, whatever this
  setting; see [Answering machine detection](/build/speech-pipeline/answering-machine-detection).
- A new agent created with **Start from scratch** has the language chosen in the
  wizard; a text agent may show **Select language…** until you pick one.

## Verify

Start a call under **Testing**, **Call**, and speak a full sentence. The transcript
on the right should read as you spoke it.

## Troubleshooting

- **The transcript is nonsense.** The language does not match what was spoken.
  Change **Language** and pick a voice for it.
- **No voices available for selected language.** The voice list for that locale is
  empty. Choose a neighbouring locale with a **Multilingual** voice.

## Related

- [Choosing a voice](/build/voice-and-audio/choosing-a-voice)
- [Answering machine detection](/build/speech-pipeline/answering-machine-detection)
- [Prompting guide](/build/prompting/prompting-guide)
- [Quickstart: your first voice agent](/get-started/quickstart-voice-agent)