In the iOS app, the text to speech button is failing to produce Japanese pronunciation. It’s defaulting to the robotic sounding voice that’s used when language encoding is ambiguous. This is a recent regression; it was working correctly in May.
Repro:
- Set the input and output languages to Japanese -> English (US)
- Type or paste in some Japanese and wait for translation. Let’s go with ぐんま.
- Click the speaker icon to hear the TTS. It will be the iOS fallback voice, with incorrect pronunciation.
My config:
iPhone 17 Pro
iOS 26.5.1
I have set Japanese as the default language in the iOS Accessibility Settings. The “auto-detect languages” setting is enabled. I have tried disabling the auto-detect and also I’ve tried rebooting. Neither had any effect.
Temporary work-around: I am using the speech controller and tapping the original Japanese, which results in correct Japanese TTS pronunciation, using whatever Japanese voice I have selected in the accessibility settings.
When I translate something from Japanese to English, clicking the speech icon on the translated word/phrase should result in correct Japanese pronunciation.
