Transcribe Dutch audio to text, free

What makes Dutch hard to transcribe

Dutch compounds words the way German does, and Flemish and Netherlandic speech differ enough in vowel quality that they behave like separate accents rather than regional shades. Dutch speakers also switch to English mid-sentence more freely than almost any other language group, which keeps script decisions constant.

What your Dutch transcript looks like

Compounds are written closed, as Dutch requires. The ij digraph is written as two letters rather than a single character.

[00:00 → 00:04] Goedemorgen allemaal, we beginnen met de vergadering.

[00:04 → 00:08] Eerst bespreken we de verkoopcijfers van vorige maand.

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

How accurate to expect

Standard Dutch from the Netherlands and Flanders both transcribe well. Frisian and heavy regional dialects are separate cases and much weaker.

What usually needs fixing

1. 1 Compound word boundaries, which Dutch writes closed and which are easy to split incorrectly.
2. 2 The frequent English insertions in Dutch business speech occasionally being rendered phonetically.
3. 3 Flemish vocabulary transcribed into the Netherlandic equivalent.

Getting better results

• → Business Dutch is dense with untranslated English terms; these stay in English rather than being forced into Dutch.
• → Flemish recordings transcribe into standard Dutch spelling.

Who transcribes Dutch