Google’s preferred video calling service,Google Meet, has picked up a handful of exciting features in the recent past. Accessibility continues to be a key focus for the service, with features like captions for recorded meetingsarriving this year, albeit only for eligible Workspace accounts. The Google Meet team is now announcing the addition of new languages to closed captioning and translated captions.
The Google Workspace blogrevealedthat closed captioning on Meet is picking up Indonesian, Polish, Romanian, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese, all in beta. Google is also adding French Canadian to the list, but it’s currently limited to the web, with the mobile version “coming soon.” Google further shared that closed captioning languages like Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Russian have made it out of beta.
Meanwhile, the helpful translated captions feature on the service will now translate Google Meet calls in English to Dutch, Indonesian, Turkish, or Vietnamese, also in beta.
The new languages for closed captions will be available to all users, regardless of their Google Workspace subscription type; translated captions are only available forsome Workspace tiersand teachers via the Google Classroom portal. But on the brighter side, these languages are rolling out right away to all eligible users and not in a phased manner which can usually take up to a week or two to pop up.
Google Meet’s live-translated captions were in theworks for a long timebefore the company rolled out support for English translations into French, German, Portuguese, and Spanishearly last year, eventually enabling two-way translations as well. By adding more languages to the list, Meet is making its service accessible to millions of new users across the globe while also proving to be a real lifeline for individuals with hearing impairments.
