7 ms·
NotebookLM Audio Overviews are now available in over 50 languages
- anyfactor 1y agohttps://support.google.com/notebooklm/answer/15731776 https://support.google.com/notebooklm/answer/15731776 - Afrikaans - Albanian - Arabic - Armenian - Azerbaijani - Basque - Bengali - Bulgarian - Burmese (Myanmar) - Catalan - Cebuano - Chinese (Simplified) - Chinese (Traditional) - Croatian - Czech - Danish - Dutch - English - Estonian - Filipino - Finnish - French (Canada) - French (European) - Galician - Georgian - German - Greek - Gujarati - Haitian Creole - Hebrew - Hindi - Hungarian - Icelandic - Indonesian - Italian - Japanese - Javanese - Kannada - Konkani - Korean - Latin - Latvian - Lithuanian - Macedonian - Maithili - Malay - Malayalam - Marathi - Nepali - Norwegian (Bokmål) - Norwegian (Nynorsk) - Oriya - Pashto - Persian - Polish - Portuguese (Brazil) - Portuguese (Portugal) - Punjabi - Romanian - Russian - Serbian (Cyrillic) - Sindhi - Sinhala - Slovak - Slovenian - Spanish (European) - Spanish (Latin America) - Spanish (Mexico) - Swahili - Swedish - Tamil - Telugu - Thai - Turkish - Ukrainian - Urdu - Vietnamese
- riffic 1y agocool, thanks for the wall of text.
- jszymborski 1y agoThere's a collapse feature (the [-] link at the top of the post)
- crazygringo 1y agoIt's still far too much for a HN comment. You have to scroll down a couple pages' worth before you even realize this might be SO long you need to collapse it. So then you've got to scroll back UP a couple pages, find the teensy [-] link... It's enough to just post the link to the list of languages. The list itself doesn't belong in a comment here, when it's that long.
- riffic 1y agonot to mention most of us know how to click to a source to view the authoritative list. why repeat it here?
- behnamoh 1y ago> Persian I'm glad the name of my native language is written correctly. In many cases, people say "Farsi", which is offensive to many Iranians because it's the Arabic version of the word "Parsi" (unlike Persian, Arabic doesn't have "p", "g", "ch", "zh"). It's like someone calling English "Anglaise" because that's how the French say it. PS: Contrary to common belief, Persian and Arabic are totally different languages, though they have borrowed words from one another (think English and French). Persian is an Indo-European language whereas Arabic is Aramaic (same roots as Hebrew).
- myth_drannon 1y agoSmall nitpicking, Arabic is from a different branch of Semitic languages than Aramaic or Hebrew (which are very similar). And TIL I learned that Aramaic replaced Hebrew in Judea because the Persian Empire maintained Aramaic as the official administrative language, and Jews brought it back, coming back from the Babylonian captivity.
- FlyingSnake 1y agoInteresting. This is the first time I’m hearing that Farsi is offensive to Iranians. None of my Irani friends have objected so I’m curious if I’m missing something. Wikipedia says Farsi should be avoided in Western languages, but what about others? Persian is called Farsi in Indian subcontinent due to the deep historical connections we share. We have proverbs saying Farsi is the sign of a learned person etc.
- crazygringo 1y ago> It's like someone calling English "Anglaise" because that's how the French say it. That is the case for some other languages, though. We call the language German rather than Deutsch because Germani was the Latin name for tribes in the area, for example. Or native names get modified too -- in English we don't call it Espanish, just Spanish, even though it comes from español. The names of languages in other languages tend to get modified in tons of different and random ways for lots of reasons. Is there really a reason to take offense at it? It doesn't bother me that Italians call me an americano instead of an American. It's just a letter change. So why is it so bothersome that it's called Farsi rather than Parsi? Can't the change from "p" to "f" be seen as an interesting historical quirk, due to the fascinating effect of Arabic on European languages in the Middle Ages? At the same time that we got Arabic words like "algebra" and "alcohol"?
- iWontSayMyName 1y ago[flagged]
- iWontSayMyNamey 1y ago[flagged]
- HackerOfTheYear 1y ago[flagged]
- ipsum2 1y agoDo people find NotebookLM useful? For my use case of converting papers into podcasts, the explanations are too general (which misses the important parts of the paper) and contain too much fluff. I suspect that changing the underlying model to Gemini 2.5 Pro would produce better transcripts, but right now there's no way of determining what model is being used.
- jszymborski 1y agoI've run them on my own papers and, while sometimes they are accurate, they are sometimes very very wrong and misrepresent things. And I don't mean in nuanced or unimportant ways. The TTS is amazing, but the audio overviews are frankly useless for me.
- harryf 1y agoIt’s useful for getting summaries of long YouTube videos - I’m found it semi helpful for improving my Davinci Resolve skills. That said Google is screwing the pooch as usual by trying to make it another walled garden. Slap an API on NoteboolLM already! The market research has already been done - there’s even an unofficial API https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooklm/comments/1eti9iz/api_for_notebooklm/ https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooklm/comments/1eti9iz/api_for...
- energy123 1y agoFor YouTube videos it's hard to beat (1) copy transcript to clipboard (from eg tactiq) (2) paste into LLM chat and ask for summary
- skeptrune 1y agoIt's hard for every AI product to beat that workflow lol. It works well for basically everything.
- Rebelgecko 1y agoFull disclosure, I work for Google opinions are my own etc etc The LLM built into YouTube is one of the few LLM chatbots bolted onto existing apps that I actually find useful. Not just for summaries but questions like "what is the timestamp in this 2 hour video where they talk about _____".
- TekMol 1y agoI find the podcast style audio it produces super annoying. Is there an easy way to simply have text read to me unaltered?
- footlose_3815 1y agoI really is an obnoxious level of over-enthusiasm.
- kleiba 1y agoGive German a try - trust me, you don't have to speak the language but anyone can tell that it's quite different in tone. No valley girls in Deutschland!
- sega_sai 1y agoAbsolutely the same complaint. I wanted to see if it could summarize papers well, but I just could not handle all the conversation and attempts to make it 'exciting'. Especially in areas where I already know the background.
- threeducks 1y agoOver seven years ago, this has been foretold exactly by the show Silicon Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3pYZwol6Dc&t=73s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3pYZwol6Dc&t=73s Transcript of the fridge scene: Fridge (after a bar code was scanned): "Ah, there we go." Gilfoyle: "It's bad enough that it has to talk. Does it need fake vocal ticks like 'uh'." Dinesh: "Well it just makes it sound more human." Gilfoyle: "Humans are shit. This thing is addressing problems that don't exist. It's solutionism at its worst. We are dumbing down machines that are inherently superior." I would like to have a Gilfyole mode for NotebookLM where the machine answers only with cold precision instead of endless "Mmmhmm", "Yeah!", "Amazing!", "That's so cool!".
- shreezus 1y agoIt's one of those things that's impressive initially, but after generating a couple it feels quite formulaic.
- ljoshua 1y agoNotebookLM audio overviews/podcasts have been an absolute boon for my homeschooled kids. They devour audiobooks and podcasts, and they love learning by listening to these first. Then when we come together for class, we discuss what was covered, and can spend time diving into specifics or doing activities based on the content. It’s super nice to have another option for a learning medium here. To generate them, we’ve scanned the physical book pages, and then with a simple Python script fed the images into GCP’s Document AI to extract the text en-masse, and concatenated the results together into a text-only version of the chapter. Give that text to NotebookLM and run with it.
- SecretDreams 1y agoI've used them. They're very nifty. Google did good here. One thing I'll note is they only cover the "high level" aspects. No depth. I'd recommend them for someone who is either already very knowledgeable or for someone not at all knowledgeable who is looking for an overview before they plan to do deeper learning/studying through reading.
- bbatsell 1y ago> or for someone not at all knowledgeable who is looking for an overview before they plan to do deeper learning/studying through reading Yep. This is what I have used them (sparingly) for — a scaffold to build the deeper learning onto. My brain struggles to retain information when it doesn’t have a high-level understanding of how/why a system works and how individual parts connect and interact, even if it is all eventually revealed later.
- SecretDreams 1y agoVery well said.
- suddenlybananas 1y agoI hope you encourage your kids to actually read as well.
- tinyhouse 1y agoThey don't have an app? strange.
- xnx 1y agoComing soon: https://9to5google.com/2025/05/01/notebooklm-android-iphone/ https://9to5google.com/2025/05/01/notebooklm-android-iphone/
- hu3 1y agoI like to feed Hacker News comments to generate a podcast. It's good to get the big picture about the discussion with 300+ comments.
- shihabkhanbd 1y ago[dead]
- ahmedfromtunis 1y agoThe best feature is by far the ability to interact with the "hosts" to ask for clarifications or to guide them into focusing on a particular aspect; even for things that weren't covered in the source material.
- lenwood 1y agoI like the NotebookLM podcasting feature, have used it a few times to come up to speed. There's one quirk of the dialogue that I find annoying though, the two speakers finish one another's sentences. At first I thought that was a nice touch, but it happens often enough that it became distracting. I should experiment with the prompt to limit how often it happens.
- mikeocool 1y agoNotebookLM podcasts are like a caricature of a real podcast. Every little verbal technique or narrative style that might be used by a normal podcaster in a subtle way is taken to an extreme. The last one I listened to one host would repeat a keyword or phrase the other host had just said for emphasis — except they did incessantly — with multiple words in every sentence for many sentences in a row.
- latentsea 1y ago> NotebookLM podcasts are like a caricature of a real podcast. Every little verbal technique or narrative style that might be used by a normal podcaster in a subtle way is taken to an extreme. So true.
- gervwyk 1y agoAlthough I 100% agree, there is still a place for it. We place generated conversations with our case studies, and have receive good positive feedback so far, especially from the non-technical crowd. See example https://resonancy.io/case-studies/flava-process-digitization https://resonancy.io/case-studies/flava-process-digitization Of course one can invest more in better authenticity but for what it is, I believe it is a good bang for effort.. Also, if you listen to it for a while, and get over the initial cringe, it becomes enjoyable, at least for me. Some visitors even asked if it was Ai generated. lol Excited and frightened about the future where its more a real. This was a cool comparison I came across recently [2] Interestingly I saw today the Descripts Avatars are made to sound and look non-realistic on purpose to avoid I guess all kind of issues, but they claim they want to leave something authentic on the table for real content. Which I think is a good move.. [1] - https://resonancy.io/case-studies/flava-process-digitization https://resonancy.io/case-studies/flava-process-digitization [2] - https://yummy-fir-7a4.notion.site/dia https://yummy-fir-7a4.notion.site/dia
- tkgally 1y agoI tried it with Japanese, and it sounded about as good as in English. Only at one point did it sound unnatural. Japanese two-person conversation uses a lot of backchannelling (aizuchi), that is, semilinguistic sounds made by the listener to indicate attention and emotional reaction. At one point, the female voice said very distinctly "fumu fumu," which is how such aizuchi might be written in a script or manga. In actual speech, though, it would be a continuous sound without syllables and with a rising and/or falling intonation. That brief TTS-like moment was the only time I was reminded that the voices were not human.
- latentsea 1y agoSometimes you actually say fumu fumu out loud in a conversation for comedic effect.
- tkgally 1y agoYes. In fact, I laughed when I heard the NotebookLM voice say that. It was comically out of place in the context.
- okdood64 1y agoHave an audio link and timestamp to this?
- tkgally 1y agoThe link is here: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/c36ea335-6686-474d-bfa7-6558a60cb3f8/audio https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/c36ea335-6686-474d-bf... The fumu fumu is at 01:50. The podcast is about the impact of AI on higher education in Japan. I prompted NotebookLM briefly in Japanese about the topic, and it collected ten sources in Japanese and English that it used as the basis for the audio overview.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Almondsetat 1y agoI really don't understand why they went with this podcast style. Sure, it makes an impression the first few times, great for a showcase or an announcement. The problem though is that it soon becomes pretty annoying, especially because the hosts go back and forth between knowing nothing and knowing everything about the topic. They should at least choose randomly which one does the explaining to whom.
- razster 1y agoAbsolutely agree with you, we ran into the same issue. Our company actually tried using it for our software documentation and user onboarding, hoping it would be a helpful and engaging format. But the podcast-style delivery just didn’t fit our needs. It’s fine for a quick showcase or intro, but for ongoing support or business-oriented material, the format became distracting. If only they offered alternative styles—something more structured and professional—we might have stuck with it.
- moribunda 1y agoYou should check new features - like asking questions as a listener. I don't use it a lot, but it's useful when you want to have an engaging audio interface to long (50p+) reports, which you wouldn't normally read because it's not your area of expertise or you don't have time, but you can listen while doing some cardio or chores.
- chupchap 1y agoI used NotebookLM for holiday planning. I put in a dozen links with touristy things to do at the destinations and 5 odd Youtube videos. I then asked it to craft an itinerary as a travel agent who is planning holiday for a couple without kids. Included the type of things I would like to do and not do as well. The result was pretty good. The podcast generated was fun as well
- davidg707 1y agoI created a NotebookLM podcast based on a blog post I wrote and played it for my parents. They got very excited thinking that I 'made it' because other people were talking about my work. Then I told them what it really was and they were a little bit disappointed and a little bit amazed.
- ccbikai 1y agoHis Chinese voice effect is not as good as Minimax. You can use Hacker Podcadt to compare https://hacker-podcast.agi.li/ https://hacker-podcast.agi.li/
- ksynwa 1y agoTangential: Anyone knows a free/cheap service that can turn English text articles into an audio file narrating them? Can NotebookLM do this? I don't want to turn them into podcasts or conversations.
- tmoravec 1y agoEleven Reader works well enough for me on iPhone. Free tier.
- qwertox 1y agoI uploaded a Python script I wrote last week (system backup script, changed extension to .py.txt) and the Podcast it created was pretty suitable to give none-tech people who might be asking what you've been doing an idea about it.
- tsurba 1y agoThe best thing to feed the podcast is a dump of all one-liner macros we’ve added to an IRC bot over 15 years (for fetching weather, stocks, and 99% stupid jokes) without any context. Cannot stop laughing listening to it trying to figure it out and bringing up the weirdest ones.
- leopoldj 1y agoGenerated a Bangla (Bengali) podcast from a complicated property lease and price trend analysis document. I'm floored. Impossible to tell that the pod casters not real. I'm sure over a long term it will sound monotonic and disengaging. But what we have here is simply a breakthrough.
- xnx 1y agoI kind of want the opposite of NotebookLM: take verbose conversational information and distill it down to concentrated content