Notes from a meeting held in another language, translated into yours

The short answer

SozAI detects the spoken language of a meeting recording by itself, from 99 languages, and writes the transcript and the meeting notes in that language. You can then translate the transcript and the notes into your own language in the app or on the web, which takes about a minute and uses no transcription minutes. The limit to plan around: each recording is transcribed as one language, so if the meeting switches language halfway, the part in the second language can come out badly. Record each language block separately when you know a switch is coming.

How SozAI picks the language

There is no language setting to get wrong. When a recording reaches our servers, the speech recognition listens to it, decides which language it is, and transcribes the whole file in that language. On the web, the menu above the transcript shows what it decided, for example “Original · Polish”.

Detection is reliable for widely spoken languages and less so for others. In our published accuracy test it named the right language for all 20 clips in nine of the ten languages. For Kazakh it got 5 of 20 wrong, hearing them as Azerbaijani, and those clips were transcribed as Azerbaijani. If your meetings are in a smaller language, open the first transcript and check before you rely on it.

How accurate it is per language

These are the numbers from that test: 200 short sentences read aloud in quiet rooms, 20 per language, transcribed the same way the app does it. Lower is better. A meeting with background noise and people interrupting each other will do worse than this, and we haven’t measured meetings yet.

The other 89 languages are supported but not part of this test.

Meetings that switch languages

This is the honest weak spot. A recording gets one language. If a project meeting starts in German and moves to English for the last twenty minutes, the English part is transcribed by a system that expects German, and it can come out badly. The notes are then written from a damaged transcript.

What works depends on how the languages mix:

• Blocks. If the switch happens once or twice at known points, stop the recording and start a new one at the switch. Each part is detected on its own.
• One language with borrowed words. A Spanish meeting full of English product names is still a Spanish meeting. Check the names in the transcript, though; we haven’t measured how borrowed words come out.
• Constant alternation. A meeting with an interpreter, or where each person speaks their own language sentence by sentence, is the case SozAI handles worst. We don’t recommend it for that, and we haven’t found a setting that fixes it.

Getting the transcript and notes in your language

The notes come out in the language of the meeting, so a meeting held in Polish gets Polish notes. To read them in English, or anything else, translate the recording afterwards. On the web:

1. Open the recording at web.sozai.app.
2. Open the “Original” menu above the transcript and choose “Translate into…”.
3. Pick a language. The text and the notes are both translated, usually in about a minute, and no transcription minutes are spent.
4. Switch between the translation and the original from the same menu. If you make the notes after translating, press “Update” to translate them too.

The iPhone, iPad, Android and Mac apps translate a transcript and its notes as well.

A machine translation of meeting notes is fine for understanding what was agreed. For a contract or anything else you will sign, have a person translate it.

Recording the meeting

Nothing about the recording changes for another language. In a room, use the phone app or a laptop microphone (notes from in-person meetings). For a video call in Chrome or Edge, record the call’s tab with the web version (meeting notes without a bot).

The Mac app’s meeting mode is different: it transcribes on the Mac itself, with the language set to “Automatic” unless you choose one. Our accuracy test doesn’t cover it, and it makes no notes automatically, so for a meeting in a language you don’t read well, a recording that goes through our servers gives you more to work with.

When SozAI is not a fit

• Meetings where two languages alternate every few sentences, including interpreted ones.
• You need interpretation while the meeting is happening. SozAI translates the recording afterwards.
• You need a certified translation of what was said.
• Your language scored poorly in our test (Kazakh, for now) and you can’t check the transcript yourself.

Recordings are stored on our servers in Germany (Hetzner); speech recognition and translation are run by partners listed on our sub-processor list. More on how meeting notes are put together is on the AI meeting notes page.