Emotion level dubbing controls the emotional intensity of dubbed audio in speech translation. Set an emotion level to reduce source-language intonation patterns that can make cross-language dubbing sound unnatural to native speakers of the target language.
How it works
In speech translation, the system uses voice cloning by default to replicate the original speaker's voice, emotions, and prosody for the target language dubbing. However, cross-language dubbing can carry the source language's intonation patterns into the target language, producing dubbing that sounds accented and unnatural.
Emotion level dubbing addresses this by weakening the source language's intonation and emotional characteristics. It provides two emotion control modes:
| Emotion level | Value | Description |
| Slight emotion | SlightEmotion | Retains the basic intonation of the original audio. The dubbing sounds natural with slight emotional inflections. |
| No emotion | NoEmotion | Uses a completely flat and stable tone for dubbing with no emotional inflections. |
If you do not set the EmotionLevel parameter, the system uses the default voice cloning mode for dubbing.
Emotion level dubbing is an enhancement configuration for speech translation. It is not an independent translation level. Only speech translation supports the EmotionLevel parameter. Subtitle translation does not involve dubbing and does not require this parameter. For more information about video translation features including subtitle translation, speech translation, and lip-sync translation, see the video translation overview.
Scenarios
The default voice cloning mode preserves the original speaker's intonation and emotional characteristics. During cross-language dubbing, the source language's intonation patterns are carried into the target language, causing the dubbed audio to have a noticeable foreign accent:
Chinese to English — Chinese intonation patterns are carried into the English dubbing, causing the English to sound unnatural with abnormal emotional inflections that do not match native English speech patterns.
English to Chinese — English intonation patterns are carried into the Chinese dubbing, causing the Chinese to sound like a non-native speaker with unnatural rhythm and tones.
Emotion level dubbing does not regenerate the dubbing entirely in the target language's native intonation. Instead, it weakens the source language's intonation and emotional characteristics by removing or reducing the strong emotional coloring from the original language, making the dubbed audio sound more neutral, stable, and natural for native speakers of the target language.
The following table compares the effect of different dubbing modes for Chinese-English translation:
| Dubbing mode | Effect | Advantages | Disadvantages | Scenarios |
| Default mode (voice cloning) | Fully preserves the original speaker's intonation and emotions | Rich emotional expression with distinctive original voice characteristics | Noticeable source language accent in cross-language dubbing | Content that requires high emotional fidelity, such as film commentary and emotional short videos |
| Slight emotion (SlightEmotion) | Weakens source language intonation while retaining slight emotional inflections | Intonation tends to be stable, reduces source language accent while preserving some emotional coloring | Weakened emotional expression, not suitable for highly emotional content | Corporate promotions, product introductions, online courses, and other content that requires stable intonation |
| No emotion (NoEmotion) | Completely flat and stable tone with no emotional inflections | Maximally removes source language accent, producing the most neutral and stable dubbing | Complete absence of emotional expression, not suitable for content that requires emotional impact | News broadcasts, technical explanations, operation demonstrations, and other extremely neutral content |
NoEmotion maximally weakens emotional and intonation inflections, producing completely stable dubbing. SlightEmotion retains a small amount of original intonation, producing results between the default mode and no emotion. Select the appropriate level based on your content style.
Usage
Emotion level dubbing is available only through the API. The console does not support this configuration.
Parameter reference
When you call the SubmitVideoTranslationJob operation, set the emotion level by using the EditingConfig.SpeechTranslate.EmotionLevel field.
| Parameter | Type | Required | Values | Description |
EmotionLevel | String | No | SlightEmotion | Slight emotion: retains the basic intonation of the original audio. The dubbing sounds natural with slight emotional inflections. |
NoEmotion | No emotion: uses a completely flat and stable tone with no emotional inflections. |
Examples
The following example translates a Chinese video into English with slight emotion dubbing:
{
"InputConfig": {
"Type": "Video",
"Video": "1628ae20c36******8f6f7c77a6302"
},
"EditingConfig": {
"SourceLanguage": "zh",
"TargetLanguage": "en",
"NeedSpeechTranslate": true,
"SpeechTranslate": {
"EmotionLevel": "SlightEmotion"
}
},
"Title": "Slight emotion dubbing example",
"OutputConfig": {
"MediaURL": "https://****.oss-cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com/output.mp4"
}
}The following example translates an English video into Chinese with no emotion dubbing:
{
"InputConfig": {
"Type": "Video",
"Video": "a3f9b21d457******c8e2a1b3d4e5f6a7b"
},
"EditingConfig": {
"SourceLanguage": "en",
"TargetLanguage": "zh",
"NeedSpeechTranslate": true,
"SpeechTranslate": {
"EmotionLevel": "NoEmotion"
}
},
"Title": "No emotion dubbing example",
"OutputConfig": {
"MediaURL": "https://****.oss-cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com/output_noemotion.mp4"
}
}Limits
The following limits apply to emotion level dubbing:
Supported languages —
EmotionLeveltakes effect only when the target language is Chinese (zh) or English (en). If you set a different target language, this parameter is ignored and the system uses the default dubbing mode.
| Source language | Target language | Supported |
| Chinese (zh) | English (en) | Yes |
| English (en) | Chinese (zh) | Yes |
| Other language combinations | — | Not supported |
Supported regions — Emotion level dubbing is available in the Chinese mainland regions and Singapore.
| Region | Supported |
| China (Shanghai) | Yes |
| China (Beijing) | Yes |
| China (Shenzhen) | Yes |
| China (Hangzhou) | Yes |
| Singapore | Yes |
Access method — Available only through the API. The console does not provide a configuration entry.
Parameter priority — If you set both
EmotionLevelandVoiceCloneMode, theEmotionLevelsetting takes priority.Default behavior — If you do not pass the
EmotionLevelparameter, the system uses the default voice cloning mode. All target languages supported by speech translation remain unaffected and continue to use the default dubbing mode.