How does it detect Brazilian vs European Portuguese?

The AI identifies the variety from acoustic features in the first seconds of speech: Brazilian Portuguese has open unstressed vowels and palatalized /t/ and /d/ before /i/, while European Portuguese has heavily reduced vowels and alveolar sibilants. This detection is automatic — no manual dialect selection is needed.

How does it handle the 1990 Spelling Agreement differences?

The AI applies the currently standard spelling for the detected variety. For Brazilian Portuguese, it uses post-agreement spellings (ação, ótimo). For European Portuguese, it follows current Portuguese usage. The AI does not mix conventions between varieties within a single transcript.

Can it handle the heavy vowel reduction in European Portuguese?

Yes. European Portuguese reduces unstressed vowels so much that words like telefonema and despertar lose entire syllables acoustically. The AI is trained to recover these reduced sounds and produce complete, correctly spelled words.

Does it get clitic pronoun placement right?

Yes. The AI places clitic pronouns according to the detected variety: proclisis in Brazilian Portuguese (me diz, me conta, te amo) and enclisis in European Portuguese (diz-me, conta-me, amo-te), following the grammatical rules of each variety including mesoclisis in European Portuguese future tense (dir-lhe-ei).

How accurate are nasal vowel transcriptions?

Portuguese nasal vowels are contrastive and the AI distinguishes them reliably: mão (hand) vs mau (bad), lã (wool) vs lá (there), vim (I came) vs vi (I saw). The tilde, circumflex, and nasal consonant markers are placed correctly in the output.

Transcribe Portuguese audio and video to text

Brazilian and European Portuguese differ so much in phonology that they are harder to cross-transcribe than Spanish and Italian. Our AI handles the extreme vowel reduction of Lisbon speech, Brazilian open vowels, clitic pronoun positions, and the inconsistently adopted 1990 Spelling Agreement.

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Two Portugueses, one accurate transcription engine

Brazilian and European Portuguese have diverged so far phonologically that a tool trained primarily on one variety will produce poor results on the other. European Portuguese reduces unstressed vowels so aggressively that the word despertar sounds like /dshprtar/ to Brazilian ears. Brazilian Portuguese preserves open vowels and adds epenthetic vowels between consonant clusters, so ritmo becomes /hitchimu/. Beyond pronunciation, the two varieties split on clitic pronoun placement (me diz in Brazil vs diz-me in Portugal), contrastive nasal vowels that change meaning, and the 1990 Spelling Agreement that Portugal adopted but Brazil implemented differently. Vocova’s AI detects the variety automatically and applies the correct phonological, grammatical, and orthographic rules.

How it works

Upload your Portuguese audio or video

Drag and drop any recording containing Portuguese speech. The AI detects whether the speaker uses Brazilian or European Portuguese from the first few seconds of audio.

MP3, WAV, M4A, MP4, MOV, MKV, and all other formats
Files up to 500MB supported
No format conversion needed

AI applies variety-specific Portuguese rules

The engine adapts to the detected variety — recovering heavily reduced European vowels, handling Brazilian open vowel patterns, placing clitic pronouns correctly, and applying the appropriate spelling conventions.

Auto-detects Brazilian vs European Portuguese
Recovers vowels from European Portuguese reduction
Correct clitic placement: me diz (BR) vs diz-me (PT)

Export your Portuguese transcript

Review the transcript with all nasal vowel markers, accent marks, and variety-specific spelling in place. Export in your preferred format with timestamps and speaker labels.

Export as TXT, SRT, VTT, DOCX, or PDF
Full diacritics: á, â, ã, à, ç, é, ê, í, ó, ô, õ, ú
Edit directly in the browser before exporting

Features

Brazilian vs European auto-detection

The AI identifies the Portuguese variety from acoustic features within seconds — Brazilian open vowels and palatalized consonants vs European closed vowels and sibilant s-sounds — and applies the correct transcription rules for that variety throughout the recording.

European Portuguese vowel recovery

European Portuguese reduces unstressed vowels so aggressively that entire syllables seem to disappear. The word telefonema sounds like /tlfnema/, and despertar like /dshprtar/. The AI recovers the full written form from these heavily reduced acoustic signals, producing correct spelling despite minimal vowel information.

Contrastive nasal vowel accuracy

Portuguese nasal vowels change meaning: mão (hand) vs mau (bad), lã (wool) vs lá (there), sim (yes) vs si (musical note). The AI distinguishes nasal from oral vowels accurately and places the tilde (ã, õ) correctly in the written output.

Clitic pronoun position

Brazilians place clitic pronouns before the verb (me diz, me conta) while Portuguese speakers place them after (diz-me, conta-me). This is not a minor stylistic preference — it is a fundamental grammatical difference. The AI detects the variety and applies the correct clitic position.

Spelling Agreement awareness

The 1990 Orthographic Agreement changed spellings like acção to ação and óptimo to ótimo, but adoption has been inconsistent between Brazil and Portugal. The AI applies the currently standard spelling for the detected variety rather than forcing a single standard across both.

Why choose Vocova

Accurate transcripts for both major varieties

Get transcripts that sound right for the variety spoken. Brazilian recordings produce Brazilian spellings and clitic positions; European recordings produce European conventions. No cross-contamination between varieties.

Readable text from heavily reduced European speech

European Portuguese vowel reduction makes it one of the most phonologically compressed Romance languages. The AI produces fully spelled, readable text from speech that sounds radically different from its written form.

Correct nasal vowel orthography

Nasal vowels are contrastive in Portuguese and their written markers (ã, õ, the m/n before consonants) must be placed correctly. The AI handles these distinctions accurately in both varieties.

Speaker labels across varieties

When a meeting includes Brazilian and Portuguese speakers, each voice is labeled separately. Vocabulary and grammatical differences between varieties (autocarro vs ônibus, pequeno-almoço vs café da manhã) are transcribed as spoken.

Who can benefit

Brazilian media and content producers

Transcribe Globo broadcasts, Brazilian YouTube content, and podcasts with correct Brazilian Portuguese conventions — open vowels, proclitic pronouns, and Brazilian vocabulary accurately rendered.

European Portuguese broadcasters and journalists

Get accurate transcripts from RTP, Portuguese radio, and interviews despite the extreme vowel reduction that makes European Portuguese challenging for speech recognition.

Businesses in Lusophone markets

Document meetings and calls across Brazil, Portugal, Angola, and Mozambique. The AI adapts to each speaker’s variety and produces transcripts with the correct regional conventions.

Portuguese language learners and researchers

See how spoken Portuguese maps to its written form in both varieties. Especially valuable for European Portuguese, where vowel reduction makes the connection between sound and spelling difficult to perceive.