How-to
How to Translate a Voice Message
A friend, a relative, or a client just sent you a voice message in a language you don't speak. Here are four ways to translate it, and how to stop needing workarounds at all.
A friend, a relative, or a client just sent you a voice message in a language you don't speak. Here are four ways to translate it, and how to stop needing workarounds at all.
Translating a text message is easy: copy it, paste it into a translator. A voice message is different. Before anything can be translated, the audio has to be turned into text, and most messaging apps won't do both steps for you.
So every method below comes down to the same two steps, speech to text and then text to your language. The only question is how much of that work you do by hand.
ParlApp translates every voice message automatically. Talk in your language, and your contact hears it in theirs, with the translated text underneath.
Many phones and messaging apps can now show a written transcript of a voice message. On recent iPhones, audio messages in Messages show a transcript under the waveform. Several popular messengers also offer voice message transcripts in some languages and regions.
This is the quickest workaround when it's available. The catch: transcription usually supports only certain languages, so a message in Tagalog, Tamil, or Greek may not get a transcript at all. And you still have to record your reply, or type it, in a language your contact understands.
Translator apps like Google Translate have a voice or conversation mode that listens through the microphone. You can use a second device, or your phone's speaker, to play the voice message into it.
It works in a pinch, but background noise, long pauses, and fast speech all hurt accuracy. You also have to play private messages out loud, which isn't always possible on a bus or in an office.
Most messaging apps let you share or export a voice message as an audio file. You can upload that file to a transcription tool, copy the text it produces, and translate it.
This gives the cleanest transcript of the three workarounds, because the tool hears the original audio file rather than a recording of your speaker. It's also the slowest. Exporting, uploading, waiting, and pasting turns a ten second voice note into a five minute task, and many free transcription tools have limits or ask you to create an account. Think twice before uploading personal messages to an unfamiliar website.
If you regularly get voice messages in another language, the real fix is a messenger where translation is part of sending the message. That's what ParlApp does.
Nobody exports files, replays audio into another app, or copies transcripts. You keep your original recording and its transcript on your side, so you can always check what you said.
Text messages work the same way, so the whole conversation, voice and text, happens in one chat with each person using their own language.
Your partner's dad sends a voice note in Arabic. You hear it in English and read the text underneath. You reply with your own voice note in English. He hears it in Arabic.
Speech recognition and translation have improved a lot, but a few habits still make a big difference.
Yes. Most messaging apps can't translate voice messages directly, so you either turn the audio into text and translate that, or use a messenger with a voice message translator built in, like ParlApp.
Copy the transcript if your app shows one and paste it into a translator. If there's no transcript, play the message out loud while a translator app listens. In ParlApp, voice messages arrive already translated into English.
Yes. ParlApp translates voice messages in both directions. You talk in your language and your contact hears it in theirs, with the translated text underneath.
Your contact hears your message in their language, read by a natural-sounding voice, together with the translated transcript. You keep your original recording on your side of the chat.
For a single message, a translator app with a voice mode is enough. For ongoing conversations, a messenger that translates voice messages itself saves the most time. ParlApp does this for 31+ languages, free on the web and Android.
31+ languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Russian, Hindi, and Turkish. Each person picks their own language per chat.
ParlApp is a messenger with voice and text translation built in. Hold the mic, speak your language, and your contact hears it in theirs.
Arabic