Japanese · Kanji, hiragana and katakana
Transcribe Japanese audio to text
Japanese (日本語) is spoken mainly in Japan and written in kanji, hiragana and katakana. Upload a recording — lecture, interview, voice message or meeting — and get a searchable transcript with timestamps in a few minutes.
Transcribe Japanese nowHow well Japanese works on Sprechverlauf
Japanese 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 Japanese. 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 Japanese
Written Japanese 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.
Japanese builds long words by stacking suffixes. One misheard ending can change case, tense or person — for quotes and names, a quick listen at the timestamp pays off.
Tips for better Japanese transcripts
- In step two, pick "Japanese" 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 Japanese for free?+
Yes. The free trial transcribes Japanese 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 Japanese?+
Yes, with a plan. Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-2 separates speakers in Japanese too; the transcript then shows "Speaker 1", "Speaker 2" and so on. The free trial gives plain text.
Do I have to select Japanese 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.