Languages: transcription and captions

Eddie isn't English-only. It transcribes 100+ languages, and the transcript, search and text-based editing work in each language's own writing system.

What's supported

• 100+ languages, from Afrikaans to Zulu, among them Chinese (Mandarin) and Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi and Sinhala. Tagalog is transcribed as Filipino. The full list is at heyeddie.ai/languages.
• Regional variants are transcribed as their language, then written the regional way if you ask (see Regional spelling below). British, Australian or Indian English, Brazilian or European Portuguese, Canadian French, Swiss German and Latin American Spanish are recognised by the same model as English, Portuguese, French, German and Spanish, which measured more accurate for every one of them.
• Not available today: Burmese, Khmer, Lao and Yoruba.

Picking the language

Eddie detects the spoken language on import, so you don't need to pick one. You can still set it under Spoken language in the account menu, or with Change next to "Transcription language" on the import screen. The list has a separate entry for each regional variant: English (US), English (UK), English (Australia), English (India), English (New Zealand), French, French (Canada), German, German (Switzerland), Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Swedish and Swedish (Sweden). A regional choice you saved keeps its region.

Regional spelling

Regional variants of a language mostly differ in how words are written. Regional spelling rewrites a finished transcript into a region's written conventions, so a British project reads "colour" and "organise", and a Portuguese project from Portugal reads "económico" and "receção".

What it changes

• Spelling. US or British English (Australian, New Zealand and Indian English follow British); Brazilian or European Portuguese under the 1990 spelling agreement; Swiss German writes "ss" instead of "ß"; Spanish from Spain or Latin America ("vídeo" or "video").
• Number formats. Swiss German writes 1’000; Indian English groups digits in lakhs and crores (1,00,000); Canadian French puts the dollar and percent signs after the number (25 $, 10 %).
• Words whose spelling depends on meaning are checked in context. In British English a TV "programme" changes, but a computer "program" stays.

What it does not change

• What was said, the meaning, or the vocabulary. A Brazilian word like "ônibus" stays "ônibus" in a transcript from Portugal: that is a different word, not a spelling.
• Word timing, speaker names or the audio. Each change replaces one word with the same word spelled the regional way, at the same moment, so captions, karaoke highlighting and your edits stay in sync.
• Your own transcript corrections. The original transcript is kept, so you can remove the regional spelling at any time.

Every change a model suggests is checked to be a spelling or format change before it is kept. Captions on edits that use the transcript are rebuilt to match, and subtitle and document exports use the regional spelling.

How to choose it

• On import: pick the regional variant under "Transcription language". A box under it, ticked by default, shows the price and applies the spelling once the transcripts are ready. Untick it to keep the transcript as transcribed.
• By asking Eddie in an existing project, for example: "make it British", "use Canadian French spelling", "this is from Portugal", "adjust for Brazil", "Latin American Spanish", or "use the right dialect". Eddie tells you the price first and applies it when you agree. It also uses the region for media you add later. To undo it, ask Eddie to remove the regional spelling.

Price. 1 credit per minute of transcript, rounded up to whole minutes, with a minimum of 1 credit. A transcript with nothing to change is not charged, and nothing is charged until you agree to the price. If saving fails, the credits are refunded. Removing the regional spelling is free.

Captions

Captions burned into an MP4 draw Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Devanagari text. Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai wrap at the correct character boundaries using bundled Noto fonts — no spaces forced between characters, no missing-glyph boxes — and karaoke highlighting follows the script. Titles and graphics pick a matching script font from their text too.

Cloud MP4 exports also burn captions in the Bengali, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Gujarati, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhala, Georgian, Armenian, Ethiopic (Amharic), Khmer, Lao, Myanmar and Tibetan scripts, and in right-to-left Arabic, Urdu, Persian and Hebrew. Only captions draw these scripts: titles and motion graphics in them do not render correctly yet.

The desktop app's local MP4 export draws these captions from its next release. Until then it refuses a local export whose captions are mostly in these scripts and points you to the cloud MP4. An SRT or VTT file carries captions in every language. See Captions and subtitles.

Right-to-left (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Urdu)

Right-to-left languages transcribe normally and appear in the transcript and editor. Cloud MP4 exports burn their captions right-to-left, and the karaoke highlight starts at the right end of the line.

Dub an edit into another language

Beyond transcribing what was said, Eddie can translate an edit's dialogue and speak it as a dubbed voice track in 90+ languages — see Dub your edit.

Get names right in any language

Attach a Backgrounder before importing so people's names and product terms are spelled correctly regardless of language — see Transcripts and speakers.