Forum Discussion
MicrosoftNow in public preview: Live Translated Captions in Meetings
Description
Users are now able to choose the Live Captions in the language they prefer, with the help of Microsoft Cognitive Service Speech Translation Capabilities. This will help users fully participate in meetings where the spoken language may not be their most comfortable language to use.
Previously, users were able to select just the spoken language, and the Live Captions appeared in the same language as they selected. You can find more information about Live Captions here.
With this new feature, users who turn on Live Captions are able to see options for Live Translated Captions in the “Subtitles” menu. By selecting a translation language, users will see the Translated Captions in the language they selected.
List of supported spoken languages:
English (US), English (Canada), English (India), English (UK), English (Australia), English (New Zealand), Arabic (Arab Emirates), Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Chinese (Simplified China), Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong SAR), Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan), Czech (Czechia), Danish (Denmark), Dutch (Belgium), Dutch (Netherlands), French (Canada), French (France), Finnish (Finland), German (Germany), Greek (Greece), Hebrew (Israel), Hindi (India), Hungarian (Hungary), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (Korea), Norwegian (Norway), Polish (Poland), Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian (Romania), Russian (Russia), Slovak (Slovakia), Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Swedish (Sweden), Thai (Thailand), Turkish (Turkey), Ukrainian (Ukraine), Vietnamese (Vietnam)
List of supported translation languages:
Arabic, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, French (Canada), German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
Please note that some of the languages above will be in preview state when launching.
Flighting status
Available to everyone in Public Preview channel.
How to enable
Join a meeting or start a call. Select the “More” icon in the meeting toolbar and press the “Turn on Live Captions” button. Click the three dots in the Live Captions pane at the bottom of the screen and choose the spoken language. You will see live captions in the selected language on the screen. Go to Subtitles menu and select a language to which you want to translate the Live Captions.
Note 1: If you need information about enabling the public preview itself, see “Enable the public preview for Teams” below.
Note 2: To be able to use this feature, users who want to use Live Translated Captions need to be in Public Preview. Other users are not required to be in Public Preview.
Supported clients and platforms
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Windows |
macOS |
iOS |
Android |
Linux |
Google Chrome |
Firefox |
Safari |
Microsoft Edge |
Internet Explorer |
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Yes |
Yes |
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Known issues
None
Known limitations
None
Enable your Teams client for the public preview
- First, IT admins need to set an update policy that turns on Show preview features. Learn how at Public preview in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs.
- Users then choose to join the public preview individually. Learn how at Get early access to new Teams features - Office Support (microsoft.com)
Send us your feedback
Got feedback on features in the public preview or other areas of Teams? Let us know straight from Teams via Help > Give feedback. This is on the bottom left of your client.
Thank you,
Preview Team Jan_Steberl
Quality & Customer Obsession, Microsoft Teams
- This is definitely a game changer for the world! When you speak, sometimes the sentence changes, right at the end, so that the complete sentence is restructured. With long sentences it is sometimes very hard to read them, because you only see 2 lines. It would be better if you could see 3 lines and have the possibility to scroll. Overall to all involved, great job! This is really impressive and one of the best features in a long time!
- This is a wonderful feature that breaks down language barriers. Currently only two lines of live captioning are displayed, I would like to see three or more lines. I want to read past statements as well.
I am so excited to try this feature now!!- Morgan_Fosstveit1966Would also be great to change/enlarge the font size of the translated caption, to increase visibility for certain groups of attendants
This is a really nice accessibility development
- Will this be available in the transcription as well? Currently it is only shown in the live captions
- Morgan_Fosstveit1966Having it in a transcript file (.vtt) now would have to be stored locally (OneDrive), since attendants of the meeting can choose different translations.
What if the meeting organizer could choose for all attendants?
Then it should also be possible to have the translated caption imposed to the recording as well?
- Jan_Steberl
Thank you for testing Live Translated Captions in Public Preview and providing feedback. Team continues to look into ways how to improve Live Captions and Transcription experience. You can also submit feature asks in Feedback Portal (Microsoft Teams · Community).
- Unfortunately the translations are pretty horrible. Hopefully it will improve over time
- I think this feature has limited usage scenarios. This is because the spoken language settings are shared with the participants.
Each meeting participant needs to set his or her own spoken language settings, for them to participate in the discussion in their own language.- This is just not the purpose of the feature. It is for users who can't easily follow the meeting as it is hold in a foreign language. It isn't for multi-language meetings
Looks like it is in the production environment of my Tennant.
- Hi, we are slightly confused about the functionality. Say we have 4 people in a meeting where each one speaks in English, Hindi, Portugese, and Spanish. Shouldn't each user be able to select their spoken language and caption language differently from the rest? So that as they speak, everyone can speak in their own language, but they will see the captions in their language of choice and understand what others are saying. Is this not one of the intended functionalities here? When we tried to test this, we saw that there can be only one spoken language among all attendees. If anyone changes it, it overrides the previous selection and updates the spoken language for all.
bishwasg this is not the intended usecase. 1 spoken language , and the attendees can have caption in their own language.
- MatthiasRodler I know this might be redundant, but does this mean even 2 languages are not supported where one person is speaking in Portugese and the other in English and they wish to see the captions in their own languages? If this is not supported, do you know if this functionality is in the roadmap for any time soon?
