Chinese · Chinese characters
Transcribe Chinese audio to text
Chinese (中文) is spoken mainly in China, Taiwan, and Singapore and written in Chinese characters. Upload a recording — lecture, interview, voice message or meeting — and get a searchable transcript with timestamps in a few minutes.
Transcribe Chinese nowHow well Chinese works on Sprechverlauf
Chinese works in the free trial: three transcriptions of up to 10 minutes per calendar month, no account, as text with timestamps. It runs on Whisper Large v3 Turbo, a model trained on roughly 100 languages.
With a day pass, credit or Pro, Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-2 takes over. It separates speakers, so the transcript shows who said what — useful for interviews, meetings and conversations in Chinese. Microsoft reports an average word error rate of 5.2% across the model's 60 languages (FLEURS benchmark); individual languages score above or below that.
What matters for Chinese
Chinese is a tonal language: the same syllable changes meaning with pitch. That makes a clean recording especially important — reverb, background music or heavy compression blur exactly the pitch contours the meaning depends on.
Written Chinese does not put spaces between words. The model decides where words begin and end, so it is worth checking technical terms and names in the transcript.
Chinese sounds different across China, Taiwan, and Singapore. The models are trained on many varieties; the stronger the dialect and slang, the more the transcript drifts toward the standard language or mishears regional words.
Chinese is close to Cantonese. On short clips, automatic detection can mix them up — select Chinese explicitly before you start.
Tips for better Chinese transcripts
- In step two, pick "Chinese" instead of automatic detection if the recording is short or starts with music.
- Record close to the microphone; a clip-on mic beats a built-in laptop mic by a wide margin.
- Overlapping speech hurts every recognizer. Short pauses between speakers help more than any editing afterwards.
- Check names, numbers and technical terms: click a timestamp to hear that exact passage.
Frequently asked questions
Can I transcribe Chinese for free?+
Yes. The free trial transcribes Chinese without an account: three files of up to 10 minutes per calendar month, as text with timestamps. Longer files and speaker separation start at €2.99, no subscription.
Does Sprechverlauf separate speakers in Chinese?+
Yes, with a plan. Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-2 separates speakers in Chinese too; the transcript then shows "Speaker 1", "Speaker 2" and so on. The free trial gives plain text.
Do I have to select Chinese before starting?+
No, the language is detected automatically. Selecting it helps with very short recordings and because Chinese is easily confused with Cantonese.
Which files can I upload?+
MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG/Opus, FLAC, WebM, AAC, MP4, MOV — upload up to 100 MB or paste a direct link to the audio file. Download the result as Word, PDF, TXT, SRT or VTT.