multilingual dictation
Speak all your languages. It keeps up.
Pick up to three languages and just talk: nchova works out which one you are speaking, sentence by sentence and even mid-sentence, and types it where your cursor is. No keyboard to switch, no setting to change, nothing sent anywhere.
In short
- 29 languages
- 10 free with Apple’s model, 25 European ones with Parakeet (Pro), each counted once.
- Three at once
- nchova listens for all the ones you picked, and keeps the one you are speaking.
- Mid-sentence
- “La reunión es mañana a las diez, so please send the deck tonight” comes out as you said it.
Hold the key: dictate yourself.
How it tells your languages apart
With Apple’s engine, nchova runs one recogniser for each language you picked, all at once, on the same audio. When you let go, it weighs them: how sure each one was of its words, and how much its text reads like its own language. The best one is typed. When you change language partway, it makes the same choice stretch by stretch.
With Parakeet (Pro), one model knows 25 European languages and writes whatever it heard; nchova reads the result to tell which of yours it was.
The fewer languages you keep, the surer the choice: that is why three is the limit. A long stretch in the other language, or one at the end of a sentence, comes out right; two words of English between two clauses of Polish may come out as Polish. Names and terms you use in every language belong in the vocabulary.
The languages
Free, with Apple’s model
Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Cantonese.
With Pro, Parakeet pro
Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, and Ukrainian.
The app itself
nchova’s menus and settings are in English, Italian, German, French and Spanish, whichever languages you dictate in.
And meetings in two languages?
They work the same way: nchova recognises every sentence in the language it was spoken in, so a call that moves between French and English is transcribed in both. A short aside in another language is read in the meeting’s main one.
The notes are written in the language of the meeting, and you can ask about it in another: in English, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, Korean or Chinese, “What did we decide?” gets its answer in the language of the question.
Set your languages
- In nchova, open Settings › Dictation and, under Recognition, click Add a language…. Pick up to three.
- Leave Language on Automatic: nchova listens for all of them at once.
- Hold Fn and talk the way you talk.
Questions in every language
- 00:00:04 You Can I mix two languages in the same sentence?
- 00:00:09 nchova Yes, when each part is more than a couple of words: nchova decides stretch by stretch. A single foreign word inside a sentence is better taught to the vocabulary.
- 00:00:27 You Which languages are free?
- 00:00:32 nchova Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Cantonese, with Apple’s model. Pro adds Parakeet and the languages only it knows, like Polish and Dutch.
- 00:00:50 You Why at most three?
- 00:00:55 nchova With Apple’s engine, every language on Automatic is one more recogniser listening to every dictation; with Parakeet, one more to tell apart. Three is where the choice stays sure and the Mac stays quick: to dictate in another, remove one of the three.
- 00:01:13 You Does it work offline in every language?
- 00:01:18 nchova Yes: both engines run on the Mac. The first time, macOS fetches a language for Apple’s engine, or nchova downloads Parakeet once.