Transcribe Arabic audio to text, free

What makes Arabic hard to transcribe

Arabic is written right to left and normally omits short vowels, so the same written form covers several spoken words. The deeper problem is diglossia: formal Modern Standard Arabic and everyday Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf or Maghrebi speech differ enough that a model trained mostly on broadcast Arabic can struggle badly with a casual conversation.

What your Arabic transcript looks like

Output is unvocalised Arabic script, matching how Arabic is normally written. Text direction is handled by your editor, not baked into the file.

[00:00 → 00:04] مرحبا بالجميع، سنبدأ الاجتماع الآن.

[00:04 → 00:08] أولا سنتحدث عن نتائج الشهر الماضي.

An illustration of how Arabic transcripts are formatted — script, punctuation and timestamps. Not the output of any particular recording.

How accurate to expect

Modern Standard Arabic — news, lectures, formal speeches — is the reliable case. Dialect-heavy conversation is substantially harder, and Maghrebi speech is the weakest of all.

What usually needs fixing

1. 1 Dialect words that have no Modern Standard equivalent, which may be rendered as the nearest formal word instead.
2. 2 Names transliterated from other languages, where several Arabic spellings are equally valid.
3. 3 Code-switching into French or English, common in North African and Gulf business speech.

Getting better results

• → Modern Standard Arabic — news, lectures, formal presentations — is by far the most accurate case.
• → Heavy dialect recordings are the hardest; expect to correct more than you would in English.

Who transcribes Arabic