What you need to know
- Google Meet has expanded support for closed captioning to seven additional languages.
- Meet's translated captions have also gained the ability to translate English into Dutch, Indonesian, Turkish, or Vietnamese.
- The newly supported languages are currently in beta testing as Google aims "to optimize performance."
Google has expanded closed captioning support to additional languages for Google Meet, while translated captions now support four more languages.
In announcing the expansion in a post on the Workspace updates blog, Google said that closed captioning now applies to Indonesian, Polish, Romanian, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, and French Canadian. However, closed captioning in French Canadian is available only on Google Meet's web version for now, with mobile support set to arrive soon.
This means that users who speak these languages can now see a real-time transcript of what is being said in a Google Meet meeting. Closed captioning can be helpful for people who are hard of hearing, have difficulty understanding speech, or are learning a new language.
Furthermore, the search giant revealed that closed captioning for Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Russian is now out of beta after validating these languages. Captions are generated by Google's speech-to-text technology, which is still under development, so the accuracy of the captions may not be perfect.
These changes are rolling out to all Google Workspace customers and those using personal Google accounts. To use closed captioning on the web, simply join a meeting and click "Turn on captions" at the bottom. Then, choose a language by clicking the three-dot menu icon at the bottom of the meeting screen and then selecting "Captions." After hitting "Apply," the language you've picked will be the default until you change it.
Meanwhile, Meet's translated captions are now available in four additional languages. This means the service will be able to translate English into Dutch, Indonesian, Turkish, and Vietnamese during a call.
Translated captions are available for meetings organized using accounts on the Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, or the Teaching and Learning Upgrade tier.
That said, these expansions are still in beta testing as the team behind one of the leading video conferencing platforms continues to optimize performance.
