Otter.ai is adding support for 27 languages and developing a feature that will detect language changes during a meeting. The service will continue transcribing even when participants switch, for example, from English to Korean and then to Portuguese. Once the update is complete, Otter will support 31 languages; 13 are already available.
Otter can now transcribe conversations in 31 languages
The new feature automatically detects when speakers switch to another language, with no need to change settings manually. The update is also intended for international teams, where language differences can make it harder to hold meetings and work together.
The service currently supports Chinese (Mandarin), Korean, German, Italian, Cantonese, Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Dutch, Turkish, Vietnamese and Polish.
Another 14 languages will be added later: Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Hebrew, Norwegian, Greek, Macedonian, Persian, Czech, Hungarian and Romanian.
The new languages run on Otter’s own speech models. The company told TechCrunch that it trained them on publicly available datasets, then brought in native speakers to review the transcripts and assess their accuracy.
An Otter spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company aims to make it easier for teams in different countries to work together, so businesses can retain decisions made in voice conversations with AI.
From transcription to workplace tools
Otter is expanding the service beyond meeting transcription. The company previously received $320 million from General Catalyst and recently introduced Work Mode. The feature uses meeting history and connected apps to help users prepare for future calls. For example, it gathers information from previous conversations with clients, open tasks, colleagues’ notes on similar calls and recent Google Drive files.
Another new addition is Live Assist. During meetings, it analyzes the conversation and offers suggestions based on what has already been said and how the discussion is progressing.
Dataist’s take: Switching between languages without manual setup could make Otter easier to use in multilingual meetings. So far, the company has shared only general information about how it prepared its speech models; the source provides no accuracy data for individual languages.
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