Japanese audio to text

Because many pieces come back without it. In our test, more than half of the pieces had no 。 or 、 at all, so sentences ran on. Each paragraph still starts with its time, which makes it quick to replay a passage and add the breaks.

The same goes for quotation brackets and parentheses: 「」 and （） never appeared, even where the speaker was quoting someone. If the text is going into a report, plan a short punctuation pass.

Japanese has many words that sound alike, and the transcript sometimes picks the wrong one. In our test 群島 (archipelago) became 軍刀 and 地殻 (the Earth’s crust) became 近く: the same reading, the wrong kanji. 磁気 (magnetism) turned into 時期 the same way.

Names written in kanji can also come back in katakana: 九龍 (Kowloon) was written クーロン. Read technical terms, place names and people’s names against the audio, since those are the words a homophone slip changes most.

So a short reply such as はい or そうですね is never taken for another language, and kanji are always read as Japanese. With the language fixed, every piece comes back in Japanese script, whatever accent or speed the speaker has.

Our test recordings were standard Japanese. Regional speech such as Kansai-ben uses different words and endings, so try a short clip if your speakers use dialect. A recording with long English passages suits the main audio to text converter, which detects each piece’s language.

NoteOwl understands Japanese on your Mac and transcribes Japanese recordings and meetings there, with unlimited transcription, a label for each speaker and search across everything you have recorded. Nothing is uploaded.