Question 1

How many languages does WhisperAI support?

Accepted Answer

WhisperAI transcribes 98 languages from audio and video (101 language codes, because English is available in Global, US, British and Australian variants). A completed transcript can then be translated into 87 target languages (91 codes). Live realtime streaming covers a curated set of 18 languages.

Question 2

What is the difference between a transcription language and a translation language?

Accepted Answer

A transcription language is one WhisperAI can listen to and turn into text. A translation target is a language an existing transcript can be rendered into afterwards. The two lists overlap heavily but are not identical — a handful of languages can be transcribed but are not offered as translation targets, and Albanian is offered as a translation target only.

Question 3

Do I have to tell WhisperAI which language the recording is in?

Accepted Answer

No. Automatic language detection is the default and is right for the overwhelming majority of files. Set the language explicitly when you already know it and the audio is noisy, heavily accented, or short — a fixed language stops detection from drifting.

Question 4

What if a recording contains more than one language?

Accepted Answer

Switch it to multi-language mode, which is built for code-switching — speakers moving between languages within the same recording. That mode currently covers 15 languages.

Question 5

Is accuracy the same in every language?

Accepted Answer

No. Accuracy is highest in the widely spoken languages with the most training data — English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese and Chinese among them — and lower in languages with less available speech data. Audio quality, accent, crosstalk and background noise move accuracy more than the choice of language does. If a language matters commercially to you, test it on your own audio first.

Question 6

Which languages does the Developer API support?

Accepted Answer

The same lists. Pass a language code on the transcription request (or omit it for auto-detect), and pass an array of target language codes to the translation endpoint. The codes on the supported languages page are exactly the values the API accepts.

Question 7

Can I translate a transcript into several languages at once?

Accepted Answer

Yes. One translation request can name any number of target languages. Each target language is billed separately, on audio duration multiplied by the number of languages.

Every language WhisperAI supports.