Okay, my mind is officially blown. 🤯
I’ve been wrestling with AI video tools, trying to get characters to speak anything other than English. It’s usually a mess, right? The lip-sync is off, the audio fails… it’s a pain.
But I just saw this incredible post from Tianyu Xu, and he’s completely cracked the code for Google’s Veo 3! He figured out how to make his characters speak other languages, and he used Mandarin as a perfect example.
This is huge. Here’s the super-simple trick he discovered:
⚙️ How to Make Your Veo Character Multilingual
- 📌 Step 1: State the Language
In your prompt, you have to tell Veo which language the character is speaking. For example, add the line “and says in Mandarin:”. - ✅ Step 2: Write in the Target Language
Next, write the actual dialogue in the language you want. Don’t translate it: just put the Mandarin, French, or Spanish text right in the script. - 🚀 Step 3: Use the API
Tianyu Xu notes that this works way better if you use the Gemini/Veo API. You’ll get a much higher success rate than with the standard interface.
✍️ Here’s the exact prompt he used:
Camera cuts to a close-up shot of the man’s face.
He raises his eyebrow with a mysterious smile
and says in Mandarin:四是四, 十是十, 十四是十四, 四十是四十.
💡 A Few Heads-Ups from His Tests:
He also shared a few known issues to watch out for:
- The standard Flow UI might reject prompts with non-Latin scripts.
- Sometimes the audio might not generate (a bug in both Flow and Gemini).
- The character might have an unexpected accent depending on the context.
On top of all this, Tianyu Xu mentioned he’s also testing facial expressions and is pretty happy with his avatar’s acting chops. How cool is that?
You absolutely have to see this for yourself. Go check out Tianyu Xu’s original LinkedIn post to watch his video and get the full scoop directly from him!