"Same Voice, Different Language": An Exploration of Voice-Cloned Translation to Support Non-Native Speakers in Online Meetings

Cross-lingual meetings have become essential for global collaboration, yet current translation technologies often strip away vocal identity — the unique speaker characteristics that convey nuance and social presence. While generic text-to-speech (TTS) provides basic intelligibility, it creates a disconnect between speakers and their translated voices, potentially undermining engagement and comprehension. This paper investigates whether voice cloning technology can bridge this gap by preserving speaker identity in real-time translation. We present a controlled study comparing four voice conditions in meeting interpretation: original speech, gender-neutral TTS, gender-matched TTS, and voice cloning. Through a within-subjects experiment with 45 participants, we demonstrate that voice cloning significantly reduces mental workload (p