Mixed-language lyrics change your syllable count

You wrote the chorus in English and the second verse in your own language, and the take rushes the second verse the way it never rushed the first.

The usual explanation is that Suno is worse in your language. Sometimes it is. More often the line simply got longer while you were translating it.

The community record here is small, so read it that way

Bilingual tracks get made. An English and Russian example posted in November 2025 is a six-minute piece where the writer kept almost the same melody and tempo across both languages. A thread asking for bilingual tracks the following month drew a handful of replies.

That is close to the whole public record. Nobody has posted a controlled comparison, so anything below that sounds like a rule about Suno's behavior is a guide's claim or ours, and is labeled as such.

The same sentence is not the same length

Here is one plain English line and its literal translation into five languages, with the syllables counted from hyphenation dictionaries:

Every one of them is longer than the English. If the melody was written for 7, the Spanish singer has 4 extra syllables to place and nowhere to put them, so they arrive early, crowded, and ahead of the beat.

Two caveats on those numbers. They come from hyphenation dictionaries, which is how a word divides on the page rather than how a singer phrases it, and sung French in particular drops and joins syllables that the dictionary counts. Clap the line at your tempo and trust that over the table.

Translate for the count, not word for word

The fix is the same one you would use in one language: rewrite until it fits. Literal first:

[Chorus]
I still leave the hallway light
Je laisse encore la lumière du couloir

Seven syllables against 10. Now the same idea written to the melody instead of to the dictionary:

[Chorus]
I still leave the hallway light
La lumière reste allumée

Seven against seven. The image survived, the sentence structure did not, and the melody did not have to.

Count is the first constraint, not the only one. A line that fits the number can still put its stressed syllable where the melody wants a weak one, and that lands as a strange emphasis rather than as rushing. Read both versions aloud at the song's tempo, one after the other, and listen for where the weight falls.

Tip

Translate the chorus first, since it repeats and its melody is the most fixed thing in the song. A verse can absorb a syllable or two. A hook cannot.

Tell the Style field which language, and expect nothing in writing

Guides recommend naming the language in the Style field. HookGenius's French prompting page is explicit: "Suno defaults to English. You must either write French lyrics in Custom Mode or explicitly request 'singing in French' in your style prompt." It also supplies usable descriptor vocabulary, chanson française, rap français, French house, that saves you translating genre words yourself.

No thread in this research confirms that the Style-field instruction changes what comes out, and Suno documents nothing about it. It costs one phrase, so include it, and do not count it as the reason a take worked.

What none of this fixes

Accents are a separate problem with a separate technique. There is no accent control, and the community's approach is phonetic respelling, which is the same tool used for words Suno mispronounces.

Switching language line by line rather than mid-line is our own recommendation, from watching where takes fall apart, and nobody has tested it properly. If you run that comparison, you will know more than this article does.

Rhyme does not survive translation either. The end words that rhymed in English almost never rhyme once translated, so the scheme has to be rebuilt in the new language rather than carried across, usually by choosing a different last word than the literal one.

And a longer line stays a longer line in any language. If your translated verse is 4 syllables over, no tag, no Style word and no regeneration will find the extra time.

Before you paste a translated section, count both versions and rewrite the longer one down to the shorter number.