Free tool
English to Japanese audio translator
This English to Japanese audio translator writes down an English recording, then turns each line into Japanese, so you get a Japanese transcript in polite です/ます style with a time on every paragraph, and the English transcript one click away.
- Free
- English → Japanese
- Nothing is stored
Drop your English recording here, or Choose your English recording
MP3, M4A, WAV, AAC, FLAC, OGG or WebM. Up to 30 minutes of each file, 3 free files a day. Translates English speech into Japanese.
Calls in English and Japanese? NoteOwl transcribes both languages on your Mac with unlimited transcription and names every voice in the transcript.
How it works
How do you translate English audio into Japanese?
To translate English audio to Japanese, add the recording to this page: it listens for English and writes Japanese. The speech is transcribed in short pieces, then translated line by line, every line keeping the moment it was said. Read the Japanese, compare with the English, and save it.
- 1
Pick the English file
A client call, a seminar, an interview or a voice message, saved as MP3, M4A, WAV, AAC and the like.
- 2
English first, Japanese second
The speech becomes English text, and that text becomes Japanese; the first 30 minutes of a long recording are covered.
- 3
Keep the Japanese
Paste it where you need it or save TXT or Word. Show → Original brings back the English transcript.
What does the Japanese transcript look like?
Paragraphs of Japanese, each starting with the time it was said. Copy them, or save a Word file headed with the recording’s name, its length, “Translated: English → Japanese” and the date. Untick “Times in the text” for plain paragraphs.
The files carry .ja in their names, so the English and Japanese versions of the same recording sit side by side in a folder. A recording longer than the limit is transcribed up to it, and the Word file says how much was covered.
Does the Japanese use polite or plain forms?
Polite. Our test lines came back in です/ます forms, and “Thank you all for coming today” opened formally: “本日はお越しいただきありがとうございます。” That suits minutes sent to a Japanese client. For internal notes, readers may prefer plain forms.
“You know”
Became ご存知の通り, the polite “as you know”, rather than a casual filler.
“Sir”
Became お客様, the word for a customer, which fits a shop or a hotel but not every meeting.
Requests
“Can you send me the report?” became the soft “送ってもらえますか？”.
Why is “she” missing from the Japanese?
Because Japanese rarely needs it. “Our doctor said she would call back tomorrow” became “医師は明日折り返し電話をすると言っていました。”: the doctor, with no pronoun and no gender. If your reader must know who did what, check the English transcript beside it.
“The teachers were tired after the trip” became “先生たちは疲れていました”, again with nothing to say whether they were men or women. English often states what Japanese leaves to the situation, so the Japanese can read more neutral than the speaker sounded.
How are English names written in the Japanese?
Either way. In our short test, Dr. Patel and Maria Lopez stayed in Latin letters inside the Japanese; in a longer test, well-known names such as Raonic were written in katakana (ラオニック). Search the transcript for both spellings.
Names are also where the English step can slip: a name misheard in the English transcript is translated as heard. Check unfamiliar names against the recording, using the time beside each paragraph.
Meeting in English and Japanese every week?
NoteOwl understands Japanese and English on your Mac. Calls in either language get unlimited transcription, each voice is named, and what was said stays searchable for later. Just want English words from an English recording? Audio to text does that.
FAQ
English recordings in Japanese: questions
Is the English to Japanese audio translator free?
Yes, and there is nothing to sign up for. Each day you can run 3 recordings of up to 30 minutes, and keep both transcripts in any format.
Can I open the Japanese in Microsoft Word?
Yes. Choose Word: the file opens with the recording’s name, its length and “Translated: English → Japanese”, then the Japanese paragraphs, with or without their times.
How good is the Japanese?
In our test of 50 sentences, translation into Japanese scored clearly above the dedicated translation system we compared it with. Names and the level of politeness are still worth a read before you share it.
What if the translation stops part way?
The English transcript is already finished by then, and you can still save it as TXT or SRT. Try the translation again later, or use a shorter recording.
Can I hear the Japanese spoken?
No. The result is written Japanese: text, Word and subtitle files. Nothing is voiced or dubbed.
Half the call is already in Japanese. Will that work?
Not on this page, which hears everything as English. The main audio translator, with the spoken language left on Detect automatically, takes each part in the language it was spoken.
Where does my recording go?
It stays on your computer. Short slices of its sound go to a cloud AI transcription service, the English text to a cloud AI translation service, and both forget it once they reply. NoteOwl saves no audio and no transcript.
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- Audio to text converterTranscribe audio to text free: drop in an MP3, M4A, WAV or other recording and get an AI transcript with times, as text, SRT, VTT or Word; nothing is stored
- Japanese speech to textJapanese dictation, meetings and imported recordings transcribed on your Mac, with a real NoteOwl transcript of a sample recording
English and Japanese conversations, transcribed on your Mac
Free to download. Runs entirely on your Mac.
macOS 26 or later · Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) · 16 GB memory minimum, 24 GB recommended
About NoteOwl
NoteOwl is private AI meeting notes and memory for the Mac. It captures meetings without a bot joining the call, labels every speaker, writes summaries and action items, and builds a memory of every conversation that you can chat with — fully offline, because the speech recognition and the AI run on the Mac itself. Dictation into any app is free; Pro is a one-time purchase.
NoteOwl pricing: what’s free and what Pro adds
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