99+ languages, set by you or detected automatically
Chinese audio
Transcribe Chinese audio to text
Transcribe Chinese audio to text: Otter and Descript name Chinese on their pricing pages, the script variant decides the rest. What our own engine covers: 99+ languages, up to 30 minutes per file on the free plan, no minute limit on Pro.
3 files a day up to 30 minutes, free99+ languagesSpeaker separation and timestamps
In short
Otter and Descript both name Chinese on their pricing pages, read on 22 October 2026. We are not among them: our engine takes 99+ languages. For the 99+ languages parts: the file limit is up to 30 minutes and the length limit up to 30 minutes, and 3 files a day cost nothing.
The case
Two variants, one question
Chinese comes in two scripts, and a transcript in the wrong one is unreadable to half the readers: simplified for mainland China and Singapore, traditional for Taiwan and Hong Kong. The words carry no spaces either, so the reader has to work out where one word ends and the next begins; good punctuation and clean line breaks do that work for them.
Who names Chinese, and what it costs
not transcribed by our engine
Otter and Descript — both list Chinese in the language table of their pricing page
VEED 125+, Fireflies 100+, Notta 58+ transcription languages — Chinese is not named on those pages
Otter Pro is $16.99 a user a month; our own Pro plan is $10 a month paid yearly
How to transcribe a Chinese recording
- 1
Decide the script first
Simplified or traditional is a choice, not a detail. Say which one you want before the file is processed, and check a paragraph of the result against it.
- 2
Watch the digits
Numbers are the cheapest thing to check and the most expensive to get wrong. A price, a date and a phone number in one minute separate two services in seconds.
- 3
Ask for a character count
Chinese carries more meaning per character, so a line that looks short can be a whole sentence. The count tells you whether the file really came through.
- 4
Export for the place it lands in
If the Chinese goes on screen, take SRT and VTT. If it goes into a document, take TXT or DOCX and keep the paragraph breaks where the speaker paused.
Tips
Say which script you want.
Check one price and one date.
Look at the punctuation, not the words.
Ask whether Cantonese is in the list.
Questions this page answers
Which services name Chinese?
Otter and Descript, in the language table of their pricing page, read on 22 October 2026. Fathom names no language on the pages we read; it publishes a count of 38 instead.
Does Transcribsi transcribe Chinese?
No. Our engine takes 99+ languages. We would rather turn you away than hand back a transcript in the wrong script.
Simplified or traditional script?
Ask for the variant your readers use. A speaker reads both, but a reader and a search index do not: the other script is a different page, not a different font.
What if the recording mixes Mandarin and English?
Expect the service to switch with you, and read the switch points in the transcript. The words around them belong to the other language, and a mistake there is easy to spot.
Related pages
Languages we can transcribe
Which languages our engine takes, with the code of each and whether the language is detected automatically.
Transcribe Japanese audio to textThe same two services, and the same script problem.
Transcribe English audio to textThe language our own engine does take.
Transcribe a podcast episode to textLong speech with several voices.
Sources
- OOtter pricing — the table of transcription languagesotter.ai · checked 22 October 2026
- DDescript pricing — 25 transcription languagesdescript.com · checked 22 October 2026
- VVEED audio to text — 125+ languagesveed.io · checked 22 October 2026
Reading: 6 minutesUpdated Transcribsi editorial team
Drop a recording — the text arrives in a minute
Speakers by name, a time on every line, export to TXT, SRT, VTT, CSV and Markdown.
3 files a day up to 30 minutes, free99+ languagesSpeaker separation and timestamps