Translating tthe resulting language or accents

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Using Google NotebookLM to generate your own podcasts Part three of a four-part series of blogs
Is there any limit to what AI tools can do? Google's NotebookLM tool summarises documents, websites and other sources using the medium of podcast. An introduction to NotebookLM Summarising sources and creating podcasts Translating tthe resulting language or accents (this blog) Summarising the rules of Zombieland as a podcast

Using Google NotebookLM to generate your own podcasts

Part three of a four-part series of blogs

Is there any limit to what AI tools can do? Google's NotebookLM tool summarises documents, websites and other sources using the medium of podcast.

An introduction to NotebookLM
Summarising sources and creating podcasts
Translating tthe resulting language or accents (this blog)
Summarising the rules of Zombieland as a podcast

Posted by Andy Brown on 27 February 2025

In this blog

Trying to use ChatGPT to switch accents
Transcribing the audio
Generating speech files from text

I wasn't 100% successful with converting my podcast to good old British English, but I thought somebody might find it useful to see the sort of hoops that you might have to jump through to change the accents or language of a generated podcast (sadly, NotebookLM currently only generates audio overviews in American English).

Trying to use ChatGPT to switch accents

I was hopeful that this would do everything in one fell swoop, and certainly ChatGPT implied it would:

I was really excited that this was going to work!

Everything was looking rosy:

Problem sorted! Or was it?

Unfortunately the results sounded like a Chinese person imitattng a Teletubbie, and made no sense whatsoever.

I pointed this out to ChatGPT, and it said that it would take longer and use an external translation service - but the results were just as bad after this.

Transcribing the audio

ChatGPT eventually suggested I transscribe the audio using a service like Whisper, Sonix, Otter or Rev. After a bit of research Rev seemed simple to use, and I got it to transcribe my podcast:

The start of the podcast, successfully transcribed. You can then export this as a PDF.

Generating speech files from text

For the final part of the process, research (and ChatGPT) suggested using ElevenLabs, Resemble AI or PlayHT to regenerate the podcast, but using English accents. After some more research I chose PlayHT to recreate the podcast:

I couldn't find how to join the paragraphs together, but I felt this was solvable given time.

There were many voices to choose from - here are some of the female British ones, to give an idea:

I went with Sarah (not shown above).

At this point I could have downloaded the recording had I upgraded to a paid plan, but I felt I'd got closer enough to proving that my goal was possible!

Parts of this blog
An introduction to NotebookLM Summarising sources and creating podcasts Translating tthe resulting language or accents (this blog) Summarising the rules of Zombieland as a podcast