Multilingual Meeting Transcription: Transcribe Meetings in 100+ Languages

English carries a lot of international business, and plenty of global teams run their meetings in it. Plenty of others do not. Their calls happen in German, Spanish, Japanese, or a mix of languages, and those meetings still need to end up on record in the language people actually spoke. That is the job of multilingual meeting transcription. Meeting tools like Fireflies can now transcribe calls directly in the language spoken, with support for 100+ languages. 

This guide covers what multilingual transcription is, why it matters for global teams, and how to set one up.

What Is Multilingual Transcription?

Multilingual transcription is the automated conversion of speech to text in languages beyond English, or across several languages spoken in one session. In a meeting, it means a tool can handle meeting transcription for a call held in German, Spanish, French, or another supported language and return the notes, summary, and action items in that same language. Teams get an accurate written record and skip the manual translation step afterward.

Multilingual transcription vs. translation

Transcription converts speech to text in the original spoken language, while translation converts that text into a different language. Most AI meeting tools, including Fireflies, do transcription. For example, when you have a call in French, Fireflies produces a French transcript, a French summary, and French action items.

Why Multilingual Transcription Matters for Global Teams

Meetings are where teams commit to numbers, deadlines, and next steps. When a tool transcribes those meetings only in English, a team running its calls in another language ends up with a record that misses the detail it needs, or no usable record at all. People also speak with more precision in their first language, so the version worth keeping is the one in the language spoken.

The gap shows up in specific parts of the business. Here are four examples of situations where multilingual transcription changes the outcome:

• For sales teams: A rep in Germany works through pricing with a prospect, and the call moves between German and English as the room changes. What the buyer said, and how firmly they said it, is the difference between a real blocker and a passing remark. Transcription that holds up in both languages captures that distinction, and since the summary, the action items, and the CRM entry are all built from the transcript, an error at that first step travels into every record of the deal.
• For engineering teams: A team in Madrid runs its sprint review in Spanish and works through why a migration slipped. Months later someone needs to know what was decided and why. If the tool transcribed that meeting poorly, the archive is unreliable and so are the action items generated from it. Accurate Spanish transcription is what makes the record searchable and the follow up tasks correct.
• For customer success teams: A CSM runs a quarterly review with a client in Amsterdam in Dutch, covering renewal timing, open issues, and what the client expects next. Those commitments carry weight later, so the account record needs the client's own words rather than an approximation of them. Accurate Dutch transcription is what puts the real detail into the summary and the CRM.
• For product teams: Research sessions in Japanese or Korean get analyzed the way qualitative work usually does, by coding the verbatim transcript in the language spoken and translating only at the reporting stage. Translation is an interpretive step, so teams keep the original text as the thing they analyze. An English only output removes that layer and leaves quotes that cannot be traced back to what the participant said.

How Fireflies Handles Multilingual Transcription

Fireflies covers more than 100 languages, detects the spoken language on its own, and returns every output in the language of the call.

100+ supported languages and how to choose one

Fireflies transcribes meetings in more than 100 languages and generates summaries in the same set. It achieves an accuracy of 99% in English and 95% in other languages.

The list covers the business languages most global teams work in. Key supported languages include German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese (China & Taiwan), Hindi, and Arabic. Additionally, the platform supports regional variants such as Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American Spanish. English is available in six variants covering US, UK, Australian, Indian, New Zealand, and global English, so teams whose offices spell and phrase things differently each get output that matches how they speak.

To choose a language, you set it once as your default or pick it for a single meeting, and Fireflies applies it to both the transcript and the summary. The full list of supported languages lives in the Fireflies help center.

Auto-Detect and switching languages during a meeting

Auto-Detect identifies the dominant language spoken on a call and transcribes in it, with no manual selection. It suits teams whose meetings are in one language that changes from week to week.

For meetings where more than one language is spoken, Fireflies offers Multi-Language Mode, in beta and available on Business and Enterprise plans. It covers 60+ languages and detects language at the word level, so a speaker who switches mid sentence still gets transcribed accurately. For example, when the speakers mixed English with Hindi in the middle of the meeting, each word lands in the right language inline in the transcript. Multi-Language Mode also works on uploaded audio and video files.

Auto-Detect and Multi-Language Mode are not interchangeable. Auto-Detect captures only the dominant language, so Fireflies advises against it for meetings where people switch. With Multi-Language Mode, the summary still comes back in the dominant language spoken, even when the transcript holds several. One caution either way: once a meeting has been processed, avoid changing its language, since that reprocesses the transcript and summary and can affect accuracy.

How multilingual summaries and action items work

For a meeting held in a single language, the written outputs come back in that language. A call in Spanish produces a Spanish transcript, a Spanish summary, and Spanish action items, so there is nothing to translate before sharing. Here is what Fireflies returns after a sales call conducted in Spanish:

Setting Up Multilingual Transcription in Fireflies

To change the meeting language in Fireflies, open Settings, go to Recording & Privacy, and pick a language under Meeting language. That same dropdown holds Auto-Detect and Multi-Language Mode. You can set one default that applies to every meeting, or change the language for a single meeting, and either takes under a minute.

Setting a default meeting language

New to Fireflies? Create a free account at app.fireflies.ai, then follow the steps below:

1. Sign in at app.fireflies.ai and click Settings in the left menu.
2. Open Recording & Privacy on the Personal tab.
3. Scroll to Meeting language under Recording.
4. Click the dropdown and choose how Fireflies should handle language. Pick a single language to apply it to every meeting, select Auto-Detect to let Fireflies identify the dominant language on each call, or select Multi-Language (Auto Detect) (Beta), available on Business and Enterprise plans, for calls where people speak more than one language at once.
5. Fireflies saves your choice and applies it to all future meetings.

To use a different language for one meeting without changing your default, open the Upcoming panel, find the meeting, click the language icon, select the language, and click Save. This works on meetings you own or host.

Uploading a recorded meeting in another language

Fireflies can also transcribe files you already have, so a recording in French or Japanese gets the same treatment as a live call. Accepted formats are MP3, M4A, and WAV for audio and MP4 for video. Free plan uploads run up to 100MB and 150 minutes. Pro and Business plans take larger files, 2 GB for video and 500MB for audio, with the same 150 minute limit.

1. From your dashboard, open the upload option and select your audio or video file.
2. Choose the transcription language before processing, the same way you would for a live meeting.
3. Start the upload, and Fireflies returns a transcript and summary in that language.

Uploads support Multi-Language (Auto Detect) too, so a recording with more than one language spoken can be handled the same way as a live call.

How Fireflies Compares on Language Support

Fireflies supports the most languages of any AI assistant that joins meetings, transcribing and summarizing in more than 100. Here is how the major meeting tools rank on language coverage:

1. Fireflies: 100+ languages for transcription and summaries
2. Microsoft Teams: 57 locales, or 44 base languages, for live transcription
3. Zoom: 33 languages for meeting summaries
4. Google Meet: 8 languages for transcripts and notes
5. Otter.ai: 6 languages, two of which are in beta

Fireflies is also the only tool in this group that transcribes more than one language within a single meeting, covering 60+ languages and detecting switches at the word level.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which languages does Fireflies support?

Fireflies supports more than 100 languages for transcription and summaries. The list includes German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (China & Taiwan), Hindi, and Arabic, along with regional variants and six English options covering US, UK, Australian, Indian, New Zealand, and global English. You can see the full list in the Fireflies help center.

How accurate is Fireflies transcription in other languages?

Fireflies transcribes with 99% accuracy in English and 95% accuracy in other languages. Accuracy depends on audio quality, speaker accents, and background noise, so a headset microphone and a quiet room give the best results.

Can Fireflies transcribe a meeting where participants speak different languages?

Fireflies can transcribe a meeting where participants speak different languages through Multi-Language Mode, currently in beta. The mode detects and transcribes multiple spoken languages in one session and covers 60+ languages. For a single dominant language, Auto-Detect identifies the language and transcribes with no manual selection.

Does Fireflies support auto language detection?

Fireflies supports auto language detection through its Auto-Detect setting. When it is on, Fireflies identifies the dominant language spoken on the call and transcribes in that language with no manual selection. For calls with more than one language, Multi-Language Mode in beta captures each language spoken.

Does Fireflies summarize meetings in the same language they were spoken in?

Fireflies summarizes meetings in the same language they were spoken in. When you set a meeting language, the transcript, the AI summary, and the action items all come back in that language, so there is no separate translation step. This holds across the 100+ supported languages.

How do I change the meeting language in Fireflies?

To change the meeting language in Fireflies, open Settings, go to Recording & Privacy, and choose a language under Meeting language. To set a different language for one meeting, open the Upcoming panel, find the meeting, click the language icon, and pick the language. Fireflies keeps your default on all future meetings until you change it.

How does Fireflies compare to Otter.ai for language support?

Fireflies supports far more languages than Otter for meeting transcription, more than 100 next to Otter's six. Otter transcribes in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese, while Fireflies covers those plus roughly 95 more, states 99% English and 95% accuracy, and offers a beta mode for multiple languages in one meeting.