Languages

See which languages Speechmatics supports for transcription and translation, including bilingual packs.

To choose a transcription model, refer to Models.

The languages, packs, and options on this page apply to the Enhanced and Standard models. The Melia 1 model is multilingual: it transcribes the individual languages listed here and switches between them automatically, without language selection. You can use their language codes as language hints. Melia 1 does not support the auto option, the bilingual and multi-language pack codes, or translation. For Melia 1, refer to Models.

Transcription languages

To automatically identify the language in an audio file, use the Language Identification feature.

To dynamically update your system with the latest languages and features offered by Speechmatics, use the Feature Discovery endpoint.

Speechmatics supports the following languages. Your ability to use any or all of them depends on the languages you are contracted to use.

Speechmatics takes a global-first approach to languages. A single language pack supports many accents and dialects, so you do not need to know which accent is in your audio before selecting a language. This approach achieves high accuracy compared to accent-specific language packs.

Language	Language code	Description
Automatic	auto	Automatically detect the language using the Language Identification feature. Currently supported with Batch transcription only.
Arabic	ar	Global Arabic gives high-accuracy transcription across many accents and dialects, including (but not limited to) Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Arabic spoken in the Gulf, Egypt, and the Levant.
Arabic & English bilingual	ar_en	Ideal when transcribing Arabic and English in the same media file or stream. Supports all accents and dialects listed under Arabic and English.
Bashkir	ba
Basque	eu
Belarusian	be
Bengali	bn
Bulgarian	bg
Cantonese	yue
Catalan	ca
Croatian	hr
Czech	cs
Danish	da
Dutch	nl
English	en	Global English gives high-accuracy transcription across many accents, including (but not limited to) English spoken in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, New Zealand, and by non-native speakers. To standardize spelling, specify the output locale.
Esperanto	eo
Estonian	et
Finnish	fi
French	fr	Global French gives high-accuracy transcription across many accents, including (but not limited to) French spoken in France, Canada, and Belgium.
Galician	gl
German	de	Global German gives high-accuracy transcription across many accents, including (but not limited to) German spoken in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Greek	el
Hebrew	he
Hindi	hi
Hungarian	hu
Indonesian	id
Interlingua	ia
Irish	ga
Italian	it
Japanese	ja
Korean	ko
Latvian	lv
Lithuanian	lt
Malay	ms
Malay & English bilingual	en_ms	Ideal when transcribing Malay and English in the same media file or stream. Supports all accents and dialects listed under Malay and English.
Maltese	mt
Mandarin	cmn	Global Mandarin can output Traditional or Simplified characters and gives high-accuracy transcription across many accents, including (but not limited to) China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia.
Mandarin & English bilingual	cmn_en	Ideal when transcribing Mandarin and English in the same media file or stream. Supports all accents and dialects listed under Mandarin and English.
Mandarin Malay Tamil & English	cmn_en_ms_ta	Ideal when transcribing Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, and English in the same media file or stream. Supports all accents and dialects listed under Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, and English.
Marathi	mr
Mongolian	mn
Norwegian	no
Persian	fa
Polish	pl
Portuguese	pt	Global Portuguese gives high-accuracy transcription across many accents, including (but not limited to) Portuguese spoken in Portugal and Brazil.
Romanian	ro
Russian	ru
Slovakian	sk
Slovenian	sl
Spanish	es	Global Spanish gives high-accuracy transcription across many accents, including (but not limited to) Spanish spoken in Spain, the US, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, and Peru.
Spanish & English bilingual	es (with domain=bilingual-en)	Ideal when transcribing Spanish and English in the same media file or stream. Supports all accents and dialects listed under English and Spanish. Requires the domain config to be set.
Swahili	sw
Swedish	sv
Tagalog (Filipino) & English bilingual	tl	Ideal when transcribing Tagalog (Filipino) and English in the same media file or stream. Supports all accents and dialects listed under English.
Tamil	ta
Tamil & English bilingual	en_ta	Ideal when transcribing Tamil and English in the same media file or stream. Supports all accents and dialects listed under Tamil and English.
Thai	th
Turkish	tr
Ukrainian	uk
Urdu	ur
Uyghur	ug
Vietnamese	vi
Welsh	cy	Welsh must be explicitly added to the expected languages list when using the Language Identification feature. Otherwise a language not supported for transcription error is returned.

Each language is uniquely identified by a two-letter code (ISO 639-1) or three-letter code (ISO 639-3) in API requests and responses.

Translation languages

Translation is available with the Enhanced and Standard models. It is supported for most Speechmatics languages, with the supported translation pairs listed below. For more details, see Translation.

Audio language	Translation target language
English (en)	Bulgarian (bg), Catalan (ca), Mandarin (cmn), Czech (cs), Danish (da), German (de), Greek (el), Spanish (es), Estonian (et), Finnish (fi), French (fr), Galician (gl), Hindi (hi), Croatian (hr), Hungarian (hu), Indonesian (id), Italian (it), Japanese (ja), Korean (ko), Lithuanian (lt), Latvian (lv), Malay (ms), Dutch (nl), Norwegian (no), Polish (pl), Portuguese (pt), Romanian (ro), Russian (ru), Slovakian (sk), Slovenian (sl), Swedish (sv), Turkish (tr), Ukrainian (uk), Vietnamese (vi)
Bulgarian (bg), Catalan (ca), Mandarin (cmn), Czech (cs), Danish (da), German (de), Greek (el), Spanish (es), Estonian (et), Finnish (fi), French (fr), Galician (gl), Hindi (hi), Croatian (hr), Hungarian (hu), Indonesian (id), Italian (it), Japanese (ja), Korean (ko), Lithuanian (lt), Latvian (lv), Malay (ms), Dutch (nl), Norwegian (no), Polish (pl), Portuguese (pt), Romanian (ro), Russian (ru), Slovakian (sk), Slovenian (sl), Swedish (sv), Turkish (tr), Ukrainian (uk), Vietnamese (vi)	English (en)
Norwegian Bokmål (no)	Norwegian Nynorsk (nn)

Bilingual and multi-language packs

These packs handle a fixed set of languages that you select in advance. To transcribe audio without selecting languages, including spontaneous switching across all supported languages, use the Melia 1 multilingual model. Refer to Models.

The Enhanced and Standard models can transcribe a selected combination of languages in one media file or stream, including speakers who switch between the languages in that pack. Each pack covers a fixed set of languages that you select with the language property.

Supported packs are:

Language pack	Transcription config
Arabic and English	{"language": "ar_en"}
Malay and English	{"language": "en_ms"}
Mandarin and English	{"language": "cmn_en"}
Mandarin Malay Tamil and English	{"language": "cmn_en_ms_ta"}
Spanish and English	{"language": "es", "domain": "bilingual-en"}
Tamil and English	{"language": "en_ta"}
Tagalog (Filipino) and English	{"language": "tl"}

This config selects the Mandarin and English pack:

{
  "type": "transcription",
  "transcription_config": {
    "language": "cmn_en"
  }
}

This config selects the Spanish and English pack, which requires the domain property:

{
  "type": "transcription",
  "transcription_config": {
    "language": "es",
    "domain": "bilingual-en"
  }
}

Healthcare domain

Speechmatics offers a medical domain that provides high accuracy for healthcare use cases such as ambient scribes and dictation tools. The medical domain is available with the Enhanced model only. It does not apply to the Standard or Melia 1 models.

The medical domain is kept up to date using officially maintained data sources. This improves recognition of medical terminology such as procedures, medications, conditions, and anatomy.

For languages without medical domain support, the Enhanced model still gives high accuracy in the healthcare domain.

Set the domain property to medical:

{
  "type": "transcription",
  "transcription_config": {
    "model": "enhanced",
    "language": "en",
    "domain": "medical"
  }
}

Language	Realtime	Batch
Arabic English	Available	Available
Danish	Available	Available
Dutch	Available	Available
English	Available	Available
Finnish	Available	Available
French	Available	Available
German	Available	Available
Norwegian	Available	Available
Spanish	Available	Available
Swedish	Available	Available
Additional languages	Contact us