After a year of testing, Google Meet has begun to widely roll out live translated captions. It may be used on the web or on mobile devices, but it is still limited in that it can only translate English meetings into four languages: French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.
“By removing language proficiency hurdles, translated subtitles help make Google Meet video calls more accessible and collaborative,” Google noted in a Workspace blog. “When meeting participants consume content in their chosen language, it helps to equalize information sharing, learning, and collaboration, ensuring that your meetings are as productive as possible for all.”
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The feature is intended to be useful for all-hands meetings or training sessions with teams from all over the world. According to Google, it can also be useful in educational contexts, “enabling educators to connect and communicate with kids, parents, and community stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds.”
To use the feature, users must first enable captions in settings and set the language to English, then toggle on translated captions underneath. They then have the option of selecting one of the translated language alternatives. Check out Google Meet’s translated captions help page for additional information.
Otter offers a similar service for Google Meet and Zoom, which Google initially introduced at its I/O developer conference last year. Customers of Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Google Workspace for Education Plus can use live translated captions. It’s been steadily rolling out since yesterday, so it could take up to 15 days for you to see it.
