Microsoft Launches Group Transcribe to Provide Real-time, High Quality Transcription and Translation

Microsoft has launched its latest Garage App, Group Transcribe, which provides real-time transcription and translation for in-person meetings and conversations. Powered by cutting-edge speech and language technology and with a unique multi-device audio input format, the project enables highly accurate speaker attribution so conversation participants can see who said what in their preferred language.

Group Transcribe also joins a strong research tradition at Microsoft, finding new ways to improve upon speech and language AI. The app is now available worldwide on iOS.

To use the app, conversation participants start a shared session and each leverage their phone’s microphone to capture a highly accurate transcript, showing who said what in real-time. With confidence in the high-quality record of the conversation, users can skip note-taking and focus their attention on the conversation itself. Transcripts are easy to share or relocate after the fact.

Users can also leverage the real-time transcription to speak across different languages and make meetings more inclusive. The app supports several languages in over 80 locales and enables people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or non-native speakers to participate more fully by following along with the live transcript.

The Group Transcribe team collectively speaks over a dozen languages and dialects, and team members are passionate about connecting people across different cultures. “This can be a fantastic tool for communication. What I would love to see is for this to break down barriers for people speaking across multiple languages,” shares Franklin Munoz Principal Development Lead and one of the lead engineers who built the project.

Key features

Group Transcribe provides high-quality, real-time transcription and translation.

• Start a conversation from your phone and easily invite others to join*
• Stay focused without taking notes or pushing-to-talk
• Follow along with the conversation in real-time in your preferred language
• Automatically save the transcript after each session
• Browse and view previous transcripts from your home screen
• Easily share transcripts with others
• Supports languages in 80+ locales

Each user will need to use their own phone within arm’s reach for the highest quality experience.

Group Transcribe supports languages spoken in 80+ locales including Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Cantonese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Latvian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and more.