Supported transcription languages

Descript can automatically transcribe audio and video in 26 languages.

Available transcription languages
Catalan Finnish Lithuanian Slovenian
Croatian French (FR) Malay Spanish (US)
Czech German Norwegian Swedish
Danish Greek (Beta) Polish Turkish
Dutch Hungarian Brazilian Portuguese Welsh* (Beta)
English (US) Italian Romanian  
Hindi (Beta) Latvian Slovak  
*must be manually selected when transcribing, not compatible with auto language detection

Currently, supported transcription languages are limited to those using the Latin alphabet. Languages such as Chinese, Japanese, or Russian are not yet supported, but it's certainly something we’d like to add in the future.

Set language preferences

If you work with multiple languages, you can set a preferred transcription language and/or enable Always ask before transcribing in your App settings. When enabled, Descript will prompt you to select a language before each transcription.

Re-transcribe in a different language

If the wrong language was selected during your initial transcription, you can re-transcribe the file:

  1. Click Project in the right-hand sidebar and open the Files section.
  2. Click the Ellipsis menu icon next to your file name.
  3. Select Re-transcribe.
  4. Choose the correct transcription language.
  5. Click Done to re-transcribe your file.
    Modal to select a different transcription language

Language support for editing and AI tools

Some Descript features currently support only English transcripts. If you’re using another language, note the following tools are English-only:

Inverse Text Normalization (ITN)

ITN automatically formats spoken numbers and dates (e.g., “Nineteen Forty-Five” → “1945”). Currently supported in English, French, and Spanish.

Translation and multi-language files

  • Descript supports transcription in only one language per file. Files with multiple spoken languages are not currently supported.
  • To translate your transcript into another language, use AI Tools: Translate.