Transcribe Indonesian audio to text, free

What makes Indonesian hard to transcribe

Indonesian spelling is close to phonetic and the grammar has no tense or case endings, which makes it one of the easier languages to get right. The complication is that most Indonesians speak a regional language at home — Javanese, Sundanese, Minang — and borrow from it freely, so recordings drift out of Indonesian mid-sentence.

What your Indonesian transcript looks like

Standard Indonesian spelling with prefixes and suffixes attached as written. Informal Jakarta forms like 'nggak' appear as spoken.

[00:00 → 00:04] Selamat pagi semuanya, kita mulai rapat hari ini.

[00:04 → 00:08] Pertama, kita bahas hasil bulan lalu.

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

How accurate to expect

Formal and broadcast Indonesian is highly accurate given its phonetic spelling. Accuracy declines when speakers drift into Javanese or heavy Jakarta slang mid-sentence.

What usually needs fixing

1. 1 Regional language borrowings appearing as approximated Indonesian spellings.
2. 2 Affix boundaries in longer derived words, where prefix and root can be separated incorrectly.
3. 3 Informal contractions like 'nggak' and 'udah' varying in spelling between transcripts.

Getting better results

• → Formal Indonesian transcribes very reliably; mixed Javanese-Indonesian speech is where errors cluster.
• → Religious and legal terminology borrowed from Arabic comes out in Indonesian spelling, not Arabic script.

Who transcribes Indonesian