Change the Language for Immersive Reader in Web versions of Word and OneNote

I have discovered a workaround for this bug.

In the Web version of Word and OneNote, When you select Immersive Reader, you can click on the Reading Preferences icon at the top right (the book icon), and set Translate to the language that the document is already in. By default it will turn on the "By Word" option - turn on the Document option as well. Now the Immersive Reader will read in the selected Language.

Note that this is a only workaround for a bug - the Immersive Reader in the web client is still failing to read text in the correct language as specified by the Proofing Language for that text block. And it doesn't work with documents that have multiple languages, because the whole document is translated to your "target" language. The Immersive Reader in the Web Clients is still broken.

The suggestion for the workaround came from this post:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-can-i-change-the-text-to-speech-language-for/ab5bc1c4-c0ba-4576-ad7d-d4bdb57cde76

Your reply was posted while I was composing my own post about the "Translate" workaround.

Yes, if I "Translate" the document to Irish, Immersive Reader will use the "Irish (Ireland) voices, "Microsoft Orla Online Natural" (for the female voice), or "Microsoft Colm Online Natural" (for the male voice). "Orla" and "Colm" use Irish phonetics to read the text.

But this isn't how "Immersive Reader" is supposed to work, and it doesn't allow you have have more than one language in a document that you want read aloud.

I just discovered another weird workaround, at least for OneNote.

If you share a View Only link to the Notebook, the Proofing language is honored, and Immersive Reader will read different blocks of text in different languages with the appropriate voices for the associated language. Better yet, if I add a block of text to the editable version of page, set to use a different language, that update will synch to the Read-Only page, and the new block will be read with the correct voice, based on the Proofing Language.

This may be some sort of weird synch error, because I can sometimes get the Immersive Reader to work by closing the notebook in the Web Reader, and opening it again, but that doesn't work consistently.

Click on "Copy Link to Notebook", then click on "Anyone with the link can edit"

Uncheck the "Allow editing" box" and click Apply:

Now Copy the link, and open it in Private Browsing window, or in a different browser (if you open the link in the same browser where you're logged in to your account, it may recognize you as the owner, and not open the document in Viewing mode). Immersive Reader appears to work properly in this Viewing mode, including support for multiple languages in the same Page.

If so, as you mentioned “it doesn't use the correct voice to read the text”, do you mean it's not pronounced correctly? Also, does the situation happen in a specific document or also in other documents?

We look forward to your response. Thanks for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

George | Microsoft Community Moderator

Different languages follow different phonetic rules - French speakers don't pronounce "Paris" the same way that English speakers do, for example. So using any of the hundreds of other other voices to read Irish texts will not pronounce the text correctly.

This issue is not document specific - a Word document or OneNote page that works properly in Immersive Reader in the desktop clients will not read properly when opened in the Web clients.

Specifically, a teaching document with phrases in English and their translations in Irish can allow those phrases to be read aloud, with the appropriate pronunciation in each language, but only if you use the Desktop client. It doesn't work if you use the Web client.

Dear Alicia,

Greeting! Thanks for posting in Microsoft Community.

Normally, when you use Immersive Reader in Word for Web, you can translate the word/document to another language, then let Immersive Reader read these translated words.

According to your description, I would like to reconfirm if you try the same steps as in the above screenshot. If so, as you mentioned “it doesn't use the correct voice to read the text”, do you mean it's not pronounced correctly? Also, does the situation happen in a specific document or also in other documents?

We look forward to your response. Thanks for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

George | Microsoft Community Moderator