Transcribe German audio to text, free

What makes German hard to transcribe

German builds long compound nouns on the fly, so a transcript has to decide whether a phrase is one word or three — and there is often no audible pause to tell it apart. Swiss German adds a second problem: it is far enough from standard German that speakers themselves often write it as standard German rather than as spoken.

What your German transcript looks like

Nouns are capitalised as German requires, and umlauts and ß are written rather than transliterated to ae/oe/ue/ss.

[00:00 → 00:04] Guten Morgen zusammen, wir beginnen jetzt mit der Besprechung.

[00:04 → 00:08] Zuerst schauen wir uns die Verkaufszahlen vom letzten Monat an.

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

How accurate to expect

Standard German transcribes reliably from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Genuine Swiss German dialect, as opposed to Swiss-accented standard German, is significantly harder.

What usually needs fixing

1. 1 Compound noun boundaries in technical and legal vocabulary, where the model must decide between one word and several.
2. 2 Case endings on articles and adjectives, which are often reduced to a schwa in fast speech.
3. 3 Regional vocabulary from Bavaria and Austria appearing in standard German spelling.

Getting better results

• → Compound splitting is the main thing to check when the subject matter is technical.
• → Austrian and Swiss speakers transcribe into standard German orthography, which is usually what you want.

Who transcribes German