​ To learn more, see the sources I considered: [[1] Update Voice Agent](https://docs.retellai.com/api-references/update-agent) [[2] Get Voice Agent](https://docs.retellai.com/api-references/get-agent) ​

### Answer The agent may be reading "2:00pm" literally rather than converting it to natural speech. To fix this, enable the

normalize_for_speech

setting on your agent. [(1) ]() [(2) ]() When set to

true

, this normalizes text like numbers, currency, and dates (including times) to their spoken form before audio generation. For example, it would convert raw text to something more natural like "two o'clock PM" instead of reading the characters literally. You can update your agent with:

javascript
const agentResponse = await client.agent.update('your_agent_id', {
  normalize_for_speech: true,
}) ;

[(1) ]() If you're still experiencing issues after enabling this, you can also use the pronunciation dictionary to explicitly define how specific time formats should be pronounced: [(1) ]() [(2) ]()

json
"pronunciation_dictionary": [
  {
    "word": "2:00pm",
    "alphabet": "ipa",
    "phoneme": "tuː oʊˈklɑk piː ɛm"
  }
]

[(1) ]()

Feel free to tag @AI Evy with additional questions. I also appreciate feedback, it helps me improve.