Read it or hear it?
Most Hindi recordings that need English are meant to be understood: a field interview, a panchayat meeting, an elder's story, a customer call. For these, the English text is what you need, and it costs 1 credit per minute. An English voice track is for recordings you want to publish to people who won't read: a Hindi podcast with an English feed, a training module for an international team, a talk for a conference abroad.
- English text
- Hindi transcript in Devanagari plus the English translation, and English SRT/VTT subtitles; switch "Audio and text output" off
- English audio
- All of the above plus an M4A with English speech over the original background sound; switch "Audio and text output" on
Where Hindi recordings need English
A PhD student records 14 interviews in Hindi with a phone. The Hindi transcripts and English translations go into the thesis appendix; quotes are checked against the Hindi before they are cited.
A Delhi podcast about personal finance adds English versions of its episodes. Host and guest keep their own voices in English, so regular listeners recognise them.
A grandmother's Hindi stories, recorded on a phone, are translated to English text so grandchildren who grew up abroad can read them alongside the audio.
A small D2C brand turns recorded Hindi feedback calls into English text for a founder and an investor who don't read Hindi.
Hinglish, respect words and idioms
Hindi speech switches into English constantly: "meeting cancel ho gayi", "EMI time pe bhar do". Speech recognition writes what it hears, mostly in Devanagari, and mixed sentences produce more errors than pure Hindi or pure English. Read the English translation of mixed passages closely.
Some Hindi has no direct English equivalent. Respect markers such as ji, aap and the plural used for elders flatten into plain "you"; relationship words like mama, chacha and bhabhi become "uncle" or "sister-in-law" and lose which side of the family is meant. Idioms translate literally more often than not. For publication, a Hindi speaker should review the English; post-editing machine translation explains how to do it efficiently.
Numbers spoken as lakh and crore are translated, but check large figures: "dhai lakh" should read as 250,000 in English text. The Hindi article on numbers, lakh and crore in transcripts covers the Hindi side.
Field recordings and phone audio
Many Hindi recordings are made in noisy places: a market, a courtyard, a moving car. Background noise affects the Hindi transcript first, and errors there carry into the English. Three habits help: keep the phone close to whoever is speaking, ask people to speak one at a time, and repeat a question if a horn or loudspeaker drowned the answer. The Hindi guide to keeping recordings clear has practical tips for Indian homes and fieldwork.
Files: MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WebM, up to 2 hours each. WhatsApp voice notes from Android (.opus) and .amr call recordings need converting to MP3 or M4A first. A Hindi video goes to the Hindi to English video translator instead.
The English voice
Up to 8 speakers are told apart and each speaks English in a copy of their own voice, built from about 10 seconds of their clean speech. English is usually shorter than Hindi, so the English lines rarely need speeding up and often leave small pauses where the Hindi ran on. The character of each voice carries over; how much of the speaker's accent survives varies. Overlapping speech is voiced one line after another, and quick interjections can land in the wrong voice.
Costs, with rupees
English text and subtitles: 46 credits (4.6¢, ₹3.91) for a file just over 45 minutes.
English audio: 1,250 credits ($1.25, ₹106.25).
English text: 5 credits (0.5¢, ₹0.425), the 5-credit minimum.
Transcripts and translated text cost 1 credit per minute (₹0.085); English audio costs 50 credits per minute (₹4.25), with a 2-minute minimum. Signing in with Google adds 100 free credits, which covers 100 minutes of English text. Paid top-ups open soon, charged in Indian rupees through Cashfree Payments (UPI, cards or netbanking), from ₹85 for 1,000 credits; until then, the 100 free credits are what you can use. See the pricing page for top-up amounts.
Privacy for sensitive recordings
Interviews and family recordings can be personal. Audio is sent over HTTPS, and the audio, transcripts and voice files are deleted after delivery, within 30 minutes at most. Nothing is used to train models, and your account keeps only the file name, length, languages and credits used. Get consent before recording anyone, and before copying anyone's voice into English.
The same steps are explained in Hindi in Hindi video ko English mein kaise badle, which also covers video.
Using the tool on this page
- The spoken language is detected automatically; you select the output language — the spoken language itself for an untranslated transcript, or another language for a translation. Files can be up to 2 hours long.
- Audio is sent over HTTPS in small chunks and deleted with its transcripts within 30 minutes of delivery (how files are protected).
- You can download a timestamped transcript, subtitles (SRT and VTT) and plain text. Every output, step and limit is explained on the audio translator page.
Frequently asked questions
Does it translate Hinglish recordings?
Yes. Speech is written as heard and then translated, but recordings that switch between Hindi and English mid-sentence produce more errors than pure Hindi, so review the English text closely.
Do I have to tell it the recording is in Hindi?
No. The spoken language is detected automatically; you only choose English as the target language.
Will I get the Hindi transcript as well as the English?
Yes. Every translation job returns the original-language transcript, so the Hindi text in Devanagari comes with the English translation.
Can it label who is speaking in the transcript?
No. Transcripts don't carry speaker names. The timestamped transcript helps you add names yourself while listening.