diff --git a/text-to-speech/src/main/java/com/ibm/watson/developer_cloud/text_to_speech/v1/TextToSpeech.java b/text-to-speech/src/main/java/com/ibm/watson/developer_cloud/text_to_speech/v1/TextToSpeech.java
index c4f787fd92f..50ad03c255c 100755
--- a/text-to-speech/src/main/java/com/ibm/watson/developer_cloud/text_to_speech/v1/TextToSpeech.java
+++ b/text-to-speech/src/main/java/com/ibm/watson/developer_cloud/text_to_speech/v1/TextToSpeech.java
@@ -30,10 +30,7 @@
 import com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud.text_to_speech.v1.model.Phoneme;
 import com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud.text_to_speech.v1.model.Pronunciation;
 import com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud.text_to_speech.v1.model.Voice;
-import com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud.util.GsonSingleton;
-import com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud.util.ResponseConverterUtils;
-import com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud.util.ResponseUtils;
-import com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud.util.Validator;
+import com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud.util.*;
 
 import okhttp3.Request;
 import okhttp3.RequestBody;
@@ -215,9 +212,10 @@ public ServiceCall<InputStream> synthesize(final String text, final Voice voice,
       String customizationId) {
     Validator.isTrue((text != null) && !text.isEmpty(), "text cannot be null or empty");
     Validator.isTrue(voice != null, "voice cannot be null or empty");
+    String encodedText = RequestUtils.encode(text);
 
     final RequestBuilder request = RequestBuilder.get(PATH_SYNTHESIZE);
-    request.query(TEXT, text);
+    request.query(TEXT, encodedText);
     request.query(VOICE, voice.getName());
     request.query(ACCEPT, audioFormat != null ? audioFormat : AudioFormat.WAV);