Meet Zhiyu—the first Mandarin Chinese voice for Amazon Polly

Amazon Polly is a fully managed service that turns text into lifelike speech. We’re excited to announce the support for Mandarin Chinese in Amazon Polly. Zhiyu is a clear, bright, and natural-sounding female voice.

Let’s hear Zhiyu introduce herself. Click the play button to listen now:

Listen now Voiced by Amazon Polly

Zhiyu introduces herself in Mandarin Chinese, “大家好，我叫知语，我是亚马逊 Polly 的中文女声，很高兴认识大家。.” The English translation is “Hello, my name is Zhiyu. I’m the Chinese Mandarin voice of Amazon Polly. Very nice to meet you.”

Mandarin Chinese is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. It’s estimated to be spoken by over 1 billion people worldwide. This language has been one of the most requested languages by Amazon Polly customers.

We already have some customers who are applying Zhiyu in their applications. Netvue Belle is the AI-enabled doorbell that serves the dual purpose of providing home security and smart-home assistance. This doorbell can greet visitors based on the different holidays, and it can also handle package delivery. Using Zhiyu’s lifelike voice, Netvue is making this interaction more natural and personal for its Mandarin Chinese-speaking customers.

With an AWS account, you can try Zhiyu easily using the Amazon Polly console in the AWS Regions supported by Amazon Polly. See the following screenshot for an example:

You can use Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) features to customize an existing Amazon Polly voice to make it sound more like specific persona. See the SSML Tags Supported by Amazon Polly documentation page for more information.

With the addition of the Mandarin Chinese language support, the Amazon Polly portfolio now includes 54 voices across 27 languages. You can check out the full list in the Voices in Amazon Polly section of our documentation. Amazon Polly will be available in the AWS China (Ningxia) Region in the coming months.

About the Author

Woo Kim is a Product Marketing Manager for AWS machine learning services. He spent his childhood in South Korea and now lives in Seattle, WA. In his spare time, he enjoys playing volleyball and tennis.