Multilingual Support

Anam supports multilingual conversations, allowing your personas to understand and respond to users speaking in their native language. By configuring the transcription language, you ensure accurate speech recognition and better response times for non-English speakers.

How It Works

When a user speaks to your persona, their speech is transcribed using speech-to-text technology. If you do not set a language, the persona inherits your organization’s default transcription language. Organizations without a configured default use English. For non-English users, specifying the expected language can improve:

Transcription accuracy: The system correctly interprets words and phrases in the target language
Response latency: Optimized processing for the specified language reduces delays

The languageCode controls what language the system expects to hear from users. This is separate from the persona’s voice, which determines what language the persona speaks.

When to Configure Language

For many use cases, the default English setting works well—even when users speak other languages. The LLM can still understand the meaning of what’s said and respond appropriately. Setting a specific languageCode becomes important when:

You need exact transcription: In English mode, non-English speech may be translated to English in the transcript rather than preserved in the original language. If your application displays transcripts or the persona needs to see the exact words spoken, set the matching language code.
You’re building language-focused experiences: For language learning apps, pronunciation practice, or any use case where the specific words matter as much as their meaning.
You want optimized latency: Configuring the correct language reduces processing time for non-English speech.

Setting the Language Code

For a saved persona, open its Advanced settings in the Anam Lab and use Transcription Language. For an ephemeral persona, add languageCode to personaConfig when requesting a session token via POST /v1/auth/session-token:

const response = await fetch("https://api.anam.ai/v1/auth/session-token", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.ANAM_API_KEY}`,
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    personaConfig: {
      name: "Marie",
      avatarId: "30fa96d0-26c4-4e55-94a0-517025942e18",
      avatarModel: "cara-4",
      voiceId: "<french-voice-id>",
      llmId: "a7cf662c-2ace-4de1-a21e-ef0fbf144bb7",
      systemPrompt: "Tu es une assistante virtuelle sympathique. Réponds toujours en français.",
      languageCode: "fr",
    },
  }),
});

Configuration Reference

string

A 2-character ISO 639-1 code (or the literal inherit sentinel) specifying the expected user speech language. Omit it, use inherit, an empty string, or null to use the organization default. If the organization has no configured default, Anam uses en (English).

Supported Languages

Anam supports 70+ languages for speech recognition. Common supported languages include:

Language	Code
English	en
Afrikaans	af
Arabic	ar
Armenian	hy
Azerbaijani	az
Belarusian	be
Bosnian	bs
Bulgarian	bg
Catalan	ca
Chinese	zh
Croatian	hr
Czech	cs
Danish	da
Dutch	nl
Estonian	et
Finnish	fi
French	fr
Galician	gl
German	de
Greek	el
Hebrew	he
Hindi	hi
Hungarian	hu
Icelandic	is
Indonesian	id
Italian	it
Japanese	ja
Kannada	kn
Kazakh	kk
Korean	ko
Latvian	lv
Lithuanian	lt
Macedonian	mk
Malay	ms
Maori	mi
Marathi	mr
Nepali	ne
Norwegian	no
Persian	fa
Polish	pl
Portuguese	pt
Romanian	ro
Russian	ru
Serbian	sr
Slovak	sk
Slovenian	sl
Spanish	es
Swahili	sw
Swedish	sv
Tagalog	tl
Tamil	ta
Thai	th
Turkish	tr
Ukrainian	uk
Urdu	ur
Vietnamese	vi
Welsh	cy

Serving primarily non-English users? Contact Anam support to set your organization default. Personas using inherit pick up that language when their next session starts, while an explicit persona or session languageCode takes precedence.

Changing the organization default can make an inherited language incompatible with a persona’s saved STT provider. Anam does not block the organization-wide change. For affected sessions, it ignores the saved provider selection and uses the platform default provider so the session can still start. Set an explicit languageCode at the persona level if the provider must remain fixed.

Understanding Language Configuration

There are three settings to consider when building multilingual experiences:

Transcription Language (What Users Speak)

The languageCode field tells the speech recognition system what language to expect from users. Set this to match your users’ spoken language for accurate transcription.

Voice Language (What the Persona Speaks)

The voiceId determines the voice and language your persona uses when speaking. Select a voice that matches your target language from the GET /v1/voices endpoint or the Anam Lab.

For a fully localized experience, configure both the languageCode (for user speech recognition) and select an appropriate voiceId (for persona speech output).

Speech-to-Text Provider

The optional voiceDetectionOptions.sttProvider determines which provider transcribes user speech. Provider language support differs: anam supports every language listed above, while deepgram supports en, es, fr, de, hi, ru, pt, ja, it, and nl. The Lab prevents new explicit provider-language mismatches. The API also rejects an explicit unsupported pair. Inherited languages behave differently because the organization default can change after a persona is saved: an unsupported inherited pair falls back to the platform default provider at session start. See Voice Detection for provider configuration and restrictions.

Best Practices

Match transcription language to user input

Always set languageCode to match the language your users will speak. Mismatched settings result in poor transcription accuracy. If your German users speak German, set languageCode: "de".

Choose the initial language before starting

Choose the expected language before the session starts. If your application supports multiple languages:

Create separate sessions with appropriate language codes for each user
Determine the user’s preferred language before starting the session
Consider using a language selection step in your onboarding flow

Combine with matching voice and prompt

For the best multilingual experience:

Set languageCode for accurate speech recognition
Select a voiceId in the target language
Write your systemPrompt in the target language or instruct the persona to respond in that language

Account-level defaults for single-language apps

If your application primarily serves users of one non-English language, contact Anam support to set an organization default. Benefits include:

Simplified integration without passing languageCode every time
No changes needed to existing integrations
Per-session languageCode still overrides the default when needed

SDK Usage

When using the JavaScript SDK with ephemeral personas, the languageCode field in your PersonaConfig is passed through when creating session tokens:

import { createClient } from "@anam-ai/js-sdk";

// Your server creates the session token with languageCode
const sessionToken = await getSessionTokenFromServer({
  personaConfig: {
    name: "Hans",
    avatarId: "30fa96d0-26c4-4e55-94a0-517025942e18",
    avatarModel: "cara-4",
    voiceId: "<german-voice-id>",
    llmId: "a7cf662c-2ace-4de1-a21e-ef0fbf144bb7",
    systemPrompt: "Du bist ein hilfreicher Assistent. Antworte immer auf Deutsch.",
    languageCode: "de",
  },
});

// Client uses the token as normal
const anamClient = createClient(sessionToken);
await anamClient.streamToVideoElement("video-id");

For a saved persona, set Transcription Language in its Advanced settings in the Anam Lab. Select Inherit from org default to resolve the language from the organization setting when each session starts.

Next Steps

Persona Configuration

Learn more about configuring personas

Prompting Guide

Write effective system prompts for multilingual personas

Authentication

Understand session token creation

Introduction

Personas

Avatar videos

Security & Compliance

Resources

Multilingual Support

How It Works

When to Configure Language

Setting the Language Code

Configuration Reference

Supported Languages

Understanding Language Configuration

Transcription Language (What Users Speak)

Voice Language (What the Persona Speaks)

Speech-to-Text Provider

Best Practices

SDK Usage

Next Steps

Persona Configuration

Prompting Guide

Authentication

​How It Works

​When to Configure Language

​Setting the Language Code

​Configuration Reference

​Supported Languages

​Understanding Language Configuration

​Transcription Language (What Users Speak)

​Voice Language (What the Persona Speaks)

​Speech-to-Text Provider

​Best Practices

​SDK Usage

​Next Steps

Persona Configuration

Prompting Guide

Authentication

How It Works

When to Configure Language

Setting the Language Code

Configuration Reference

Supported Languages

Understanding Language Configuration

Transcription Language (What Users Speak)

Voice Language (What the Persona Speaks)

Speech-to-Text Provider

Best Practices

SDK Usage

Next Steps