Transcribe Chinese audio and video to text
Upload Mandarin audio or video and get a transcript that solves Chinese-specific problems: disambiguating massive homophone sets, inserting word boundaries where the speech stream has none, and auto-detecting whether to output simplified or traditional characters.
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Mandarin transcription that handles what makes Chinese hard
Mandarin Chinese has no spaces between words, no capitalization to mark proper nouns, and a homophone density unmatched by any other major language — the syllable 'shì' alone maps to 是, 事, 市, 式, 室, 视, 示, 试, and dozens more. Tone sandhi changes pronunciation in context (一 is yī alone but yí before a 4th tone), and the choice between simplified and traditional characters depends on the speaker's region. Vocova's AI handles all of these simultaneously, producing transcripts that read as natural Chinese text with correct punctuation marks (、，。《》) and proper segmentation.
How it works
Upload Chinese audio or video
Drag and drop or select a file containing Mandarin Chinese speech. Works with everything from WeChat voice messages to lecture recordings to broadcast news.
- MP3, WAV, M4A, MP4, MOV, MKV, and all other formats
- Files up to 500MB supported
- No format conversion needed
AI segments, disambiguates, and punctuates
The engine detects word boundaries in the continuous speech stream, resolves homophones using surrounding context, and applies Chinese-specific punctuation rules including enumeration commas and book title marks.
- Word boundary detection in unsegmented speech
- Homophone disambiguation through contextual analysis
- Auto-detects simplified vs traditional character preference
- Speaker diarization for multi-person recordings
Export your transcript
Review the transcript with correct Chinese punctuation, edit inline if needed, and export in your preferred format.
- Export as TXT, SRT, VTT, DOCX, or PDF
- Timestamps on every segment
- Edit directly in the browser before exporting
Features
Homophone resolution at scale
Mandarin has the highest homophone density of any major language. The syllable 'yì' maps to over 100 characters (意, 义, 亿, 艺, 译, 议, 异, 忆...). The AI uses sentence-level context and topic awareness to select the correct character, not just the most statistically frequent one. This is the single biggest quality differentiator in Chinese transcription.
Simplified and traditional auto-detection
The AI identifies whether the speaker uses mainland, Taiwanese, or overseas Mandarin patterns and outputs the corresponding character set. Mainland content gets 简体字 with PRC punctuation conventions, Taiwanese content gets 繁體字 with ROC conventions. No manual toggle required.
Chinese punctuation done right
Chinese uses its own punctuation system: enumeration comma (、) between list items, book title marks (《》) around titles, specific quotation marks (「」or “”), and the full-width period (。). The AI applies these correctly rather than using Western punctuation, producing text that looks professionally written.
Word boundary detection
Chinese is written without spaces, and the same character sequence can segment differently: 下雨天留客天留我不留 can be parsed to mean opposite things depending on where you place the boundaries. The AI performs accurate segmentation so that exported subtitle files break at natural phrase boundaries.
Proper noun identification without capitalization
Chinese has no uppercase letters to signal that something is a name. The AI recognizes person names (习近平, 蔡英文), place names (深圳, 新北), company names (华为, 台积电), and other entities from context, ensuring they are transcribed with the correct characters rather than being interpreted as common words.
Why choose Vocova
Transcribe Chinese media and film
Generate transcripts of Chinese movies, dramas, variety shows, and documentaries with character-accurate text. The AI handles the rapid-fire dialogue of talk shows and the formal register of news broadcasts equally well.
Document meetings in Mandarin
Record business meetings conducted in Mandarin and get written records where technical terms, company names, and numbers are transcribed correctly. Supports meetings that mix mainland and Taiwanese participants.
Create Chinese subtitles with correct segmentation
Export as SRT or VTT with subtitle breaks at natural Chinese phrase boundaries. The engine understands that Chinese packs more meaning per character than alphabetic languages, so segment timing is calibrated accordingly.
Study Mandarin with character-accurate text
Language learners get transcripts with correct characters — not romanized pinyin — alongside the original audio. See how spoken Mandarin maps to written characters, including tone sandhi effects that change pronunciation in connected speech.
Who can benefit
Mandarin language learners
Study Chinese with transcripts that show correct characters for what you hear. See natural word boundaries and Chinese punctuation used as a native writer would.
Business teams in Greater China
Capture Mandarin meetings with technical terms and proper nouns transcribed correctly. Works for cross-strait teams where mainland and Taiwanese Mandarin coexist.
Media and entertainment professionals
Generate transcripts and subtitle files from Chinese-language content for production, localization, and distribution across simplified and traditional character markets.
Translators and localization teams
Start with a Chinese transcript where homophones are already resolved and proper nouns identified, cutting the pre-translation cleanup that makes Chinese source material slow to work with.
Researchers and academics
Convert Mandarin interviews, lectures, and field recordings into searchable text. The correct character output means full-text search works immediately without manual correction.
Frequently asked questions
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