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Washington DOL's Spanish Line Speaks English?
1 Mar
Summary
- Washington DOL's Spanish phone option incorrectly used English text-to-speech.
- A viral TikTok highlighted the issue, leading to widespread attention.
- The voice service used was Amazon Polly's 'Lucia,' designed for European Spanish.
For several months, individuals attempting to navigate the Washington State Department of Licensing (DOL) phone system using the Spanish option encountered an unexpected linguistic anomaly. Instead of speaking Spanish, the automated system delivered English phrases with a distinct Spanish accent. This peculiar situation gained significant public attention after a TikTok video posted by a Washington resident went viral, garnering millions of views.
The DOL acknowledged the technical issue and indicated that they were working to rectify the problem and understand its origin. Reports suggest the voice employed was 'Lucia' from Amazon Web Services' text-to-speech service, Amazon Polly, which is designed for European Spanish. It is suspected that English text was inadvertently input into this Spanish voice setting, causing the system to pronounce English words with Spanish phonetics, such as rendering numerals in Spanish.
As of the reporting period, there were conflicting accounts regarding whether the issue had been resolved. While some sources indicated the problem persisted, a check on Saturday revealed that the Spanish language option was no longer available on the DOL's phone tree.
