Transcribe Arabic audio with WhisperAI
WhisperAI transcribes Arabic (العربية) audio for the around 400 million speakers across the Arab world and the diaspora who use the language across Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Libya, Palestine and beyond. Built on OpenAI Whisper and tuned for the realities of Arabic speech, the service produces publication-grade transcripts in Arabic abjad, written right-to-left.
MSA vs spoken dialects, RTL output and diacritic handling
Spoken Arabic is essentially a continuum of regional varieties — Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf, Maghrebi — none of which are written in everyday life; people write in MSA. A transcription model has to recognise the spoken dialect and produce a usable written form, with proper right-to-left rendering and optional diacritics (tashkeel). WhisperAI handles all the major spoken varieties and outputs MSA orthography or transliterated dialect depending on context.
MSA, Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf, Maghrebi, Iraqi, Sudanese and Yemeni Arabic are all supported, with output in Arabic script (right-to-left).
What Arabic transcripts include
Native Arabic abjad, written right-to-left
Output in Arabic abjad, written right-to-left with all diacritics, tone marks, special characters and script-specific conventions preserved — never transliteration.
Speaker labels
Diarisation that separates and labels speakers in Arabic interviews, panels and multi-party meetings.
Timestamps and SRT
Word-level timestamps and SRT subtitle export for Arabic video captioning, with proper line-breaking for the script.
Editor and exports
In-browser editor with PDF, DOCX, TXT and SRT exports. Edit the transcript without leaving the browser, then download the format your downstream workflow expects.
How Arabic speakers actually use WhisperAI
- Gulf government and enterprise transcriptionSaudi, UAE and Qatari government and enterprise meetings, often in Khaleeji dialect mixed with MSA, transcribe into clean MSA suitable for official records.
- Egyptian and Levantine mediaCairo and Beirut talk-radio, podcasts and TV interviews — the bulk of Arab-world media production — get accurate transcripts that handle the rapid spoken Egyptian and Levantine of working journalists.
- Maghrebi (Darija) with French code-switchingMoroccan, Algerian and Tunisian Darija mixed with French is a notoriously hard combination; Whisper handles the code-switching cleanly, which matters for North African newsrooms and academia.
- Quranic and religious lecture transcriptionLectures and khutbas in classical Arabic with full diacritics where appropriate, useful for Islamic studies and madrasa archives.
How to transcribe Arabic audio
Upload your Arabic recording
Drop in MP3, WAV, M4A, MP4 or similar — files up to 5GB. Long-form Arabic interviews, lectures and meetings work without splitting.
Whisper transcribes the audio
The model recognises Arabic speech across the dialects above and outputs Arabic abjad, written right-to-left. Code-switched English and other languages in the same recording are handled inline.
Edit, label and export
Open the transcript in the editor, fix any names or terms, label speakers, and export to PDF, DOCX, TXT or SRT. Optional AI summary surfaces the key points and decisions.
Who actually needs Arabic transcription
Arabic demand spans Gulf government and enterprise (with strong Khaleeji presence), Egyptian and Levantine media and entertainment (the dominant production hubs), and Maghrebi journalism in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia where Darija mixes heavily with French.
Dialects and varieties handled
- Modern Standard Arabic (MSA / Fusha)
- Egyptian (Masri)
- Levantine (Shami)
- Gulf (Khaleeji)
- Maghrebi (Darija)
- Iraqi
- Sudanese
- Yemeni
Transcription guides and best practices
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Start transcribing Arabic today
Sign up free, drop in your first Arabic file, and have a usable transcript in minutes.