French · The Latin alphabet
Transcribe French audio to text
French (français) is spoken mainly in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and Senegal and written in the Latin alphabet. Upload a recording — lecture, interview, voice message or meeting — and get a searchable transcript with timestamps in a few minutes.
Transcribe French nowHow well French works on Sprechverlauf
French 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 French. 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 French
French sounds different across France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and Senegal. 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.
Tips for better French transcripts
- In step two, pick "French" 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 French for free?+
Yes. The free trial transcribes French 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 French?+
Yes, with a plan. Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-2 separates speakers in French too; the transcript then shows "Speaker 1", "Speaker 2" and so on. The free trial gives plain text.
Do I have to select French before starting?+
No, the language is detected automatically. Selecting it helps with very short recordings.
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.