Does Teams offer live captions in Arabic?

Question

Hi,

I am a researcher based in the UK who is planning to do online interviews with participants based in Ramallah, therefore who speak in Levantine Arabic.

I would like to know whether I can:

1. See live captions in English, translating from the participant's words in Levantine.
2. Save both the live transcript (in Arabic) and the recording automatically on OneDrive.
3. Send a link to the participant without having to schedule a meeting in their calendar, as they might be on the go a lot.

Thanks,

Chiara

Answer 1

Hello @Mapelli, Chiara (Postgraduate Researcher)

Welcome to Q&A forum!

Thank you for reaching out to us. About your concern, Microsoft Teams supports live captions and live translated captions for multilingual meetings.

• Arabic is supported as a translation language for captions in meetings and live events. You can set the spoken language to Arabic and choose English as the caption language.
• This feature uses Microsoft Speech Translation technology and is available with Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.
• Each participant can select their preferred caption language during the meeting.

I found a Microsoft article titled Use live captions in Microsoft Teams meetings - Microsoft Support , and it confirms that this language is supported.

Use live captions in Microsoft Teams meetings - Microsoft Support

To double check this issue for you, I had a test call with my colleague to double-check your issue, and I recommend that you also have a test call before the interview to verify whether the live captions meet your needs. Since this is a live feature, accuracy can depend on pronunciation and other factors, so captions may not always be completely precise.

You can set up live captions as follows:

1. Start or join the meeting.
2. Click the three dots (More options) -> Language and Speech -> Show live captions.
3. A caption panel will appear at the bottom of the call screen.
4. Click the gear icon (Settings) to configure language settings for this meeting.
5. Select the appropriate spoken language and, if needed, enable translation into English based on your preference.

For more information:

If transcription is enabled during the meeting:

• The meeting recording (.mp4) and transcript (.vtt) are stored automatically in OneDrive for Business (for private meetings) or SharePoint (for channel meetings).
• You can download the transcript after the meeting from the meeting chat or the OneDrive folder.
• Note: Live captions themselves are not saved, only the transcript is saved when transcription is turned on.

Can you send a link without scheduling it in their calendar?

• Use Meet Now in Teams to generate a meeting link without scheduling it in Outlook or their calendar.
• Copy the link and share it via email, chat, or any messaging app.

Note: Check your license - Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot is required for multilingual caption translation.

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in "our documentation" to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.