Google Meet Auto Translate: How to Translate Every Call Automatically

Does Google Meet auto translate? What Meet offers

Short answer: not by default, and not for everybody. Meet's live captions are free, but they show what people say in one spoken language. Translating those captions into another language is a separate feature.

According to Google's help page, translated captions are available in Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus and Google AI Pro for Education. Google describes them as gradually rolling out, so they may not be available yet for you. To turn them on during a meeting: More options > Settings > Captions > Language of the meeting > turn on Translated captions > pick the language to translate to.

Not included, per Google's help pages: Business Starter, Enterprise Starter/Essentials, Frontline Plus, the Education Fundamentals/Standard/Plus editions, Teaching and Learning, Workspace Individual and Essentials, and Google One plans (Premium 2 TB, Google AI Pro/Ultra). Participants can use translated captions if the meeting is organized by a user with an eligible Workspace edition.

So if you're a guest in someone else's meeting, or you have a free or smaller plan, Meet alone won't give you automatic translation. That's the gap Clozo fills.

How to set up Google Meet automatic translation with Clozo

Clozo is a Chrome extension. It reads Meet's captions in your browser and shows a translation under each original line, with the speaker's name. It works in your own meetings and as a guest, with a free Google account. Neither you nor the host needs Google Workspace or a paid Google plan, and no bot joins the call.

1. Add Clozo to Chrome. Install it from the Chrome Web Store. You need Chrome 116 or newer on a computer (Windows, macOS, Linux or ChromeOS).
2. Join a call on meet.google.com. The yellow Clozo pill appears in the call. It shows your target language and, on the free plan, the minutes left today.
3. Check the target language. By default, Clozo translates into the language of your browser. If you want another one, choose it in Clozo. You never pick the spoken language: Clozo detects it from the caption text.
4. Let Clozo turn on captions. The setting “Turn on captions automatically” is on by default, so you don't have to click Meet's caption button in each call.
5. Agree once. The first time, Clozo asks before anything is sent. Click “Agree and translate”. Without agreement it shows captions but translates nothing. You can withdraw your agreement any time in the settings.
6. Read the translation. Original and translation appear where Meet shows its captions, about a second after each sentence ends. While someone is still speaking, a lighter preliminary translation appears and is updated.

That's the whole setup. Next time you join any Meet call in Chrome, the captions come on and the translation starts without extra clicks. Want to know how it works in more detail? See How Clozo works.

Tune the display once so translated captions stay readable

Do this a single time, and every future call looks the way you like it. Open the yellow pill menu in a call, or Clozo's settings:

• “Both” or “Translation only”. Keep both if you're learning the language or want to check names and terms; choose translation only for a cleaner screen.
• Text size. There are four sizes.
• Position. Captions sit at the bottom, where Meet shows its own, or at the top, or you can drag them anywhere with the handle.
• Meet's own caption box. Clozo's captions replace it by default; you can switch that off.

Like Meet's captions, Clozo's leave the screen a few seconds after the last words, so they don't cover a shared screen during pauses.

Two more shortcuts worth knowing: Alt+Shift+T turns translation on or off (you can change it in Chrome's extension shortcuts), and “Open live transcript” in the pill menu opens a searchable, copyable transcript in Chrome's side panel. The transcript lives only in your browser's memory and is gone when Chrome closes; exporting as TXT or PDF is part of Pro.

Auto translate Google Meet captions without Clozo: the alternatives

Clozo isn't the only route. Depending on your situation, these may be enough. All details come from Google's help pages.

• Meet's translated captions. If you or the meeting organizer has an eligible Workspace plan (see above), this is built in and needs no extension. Turn it on under Settings > Captions in the call.
• Chrome's Live Caption and Live Translate. On Windows and Mac, Chrome settings > Accessibility > Live Caption creates captions for audio in Chrome, including video calls, processed on the device. Live Translate on the same page translates these captions (“Translate to”); for that, captions are sent to Google. See Google's Chrome help.
• Meet's speech translation. This translates speech, in a voice like the speaker's, rather than captions. It's available on plans such as Google AI Pro, Google AI Ultra and certain Business and Enterprise editions, with a 90-minute limit per meeting, and covers English with Spanish, French, German, Portuguese or Italian, one pair per meeting.

If you need translated text on screen, in many languages, in a call where you're only a guest, a browser extension is usually the practical option.

Common problems and fixes

The translation makes no sense

Meet captions one spoken language at a time: the one chosen in its caption settings. If people speak Spanish but Meet's captions are set to English, both captions and translation are nonsense. Fix it in the call: More options > Settings > Captions > Language of the meeting, and choose the language people actually speak. Clozo's help entry “Captions in the wrong language?” in the pill menu explains this too. If the meeting switches languages, change Meet's caption language each time.

Clozo says the captions are already in your language

That happens when Meet's caption language doesn't match what people speak. Clozo shows where to change it.

Your own words aren't translated

By default your own speech is shown but not translated, which saves minutes. Turn on “Translate my own speech” in the settings, or click “Translate me in this call” when Clozo offers it (for example when you test it alone).

Translation stopped mid-call

The free plan includes 15 minutes of translation a day, renewed at midnight UTC. Only minutes in which something is translated count. You get a warning with 2 minutes left; after that, Meet's captions stay visible in the original language. Pro costs €6.99 a month or €59 a year and includes 50 hours of translation a month. See pricing.

No captions or no pill at all

Check that you're in Chrome 116 or newer, on a computer, in a call on meet.google.com. If Meet changes its page and Clozo can't read the captions, it shows a notice in the call.

Honest limits of automatic translation in Meet

• Google Meet in Chrome on a computer only. Not Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Webex, not Meet's mobile apps, not Firefox or Safari.
• Text, not voice. Clozo translates captions; it doesn't speak, record or write summaries. Meet's chat isn't translated.
• Quality depends on the captions. Accents, crosstalk, background noise, names and jargon all affect what Meet captions, and machine translation can add mistakes. Don't rely on it for decisions where an error would matter.
• Small delay. The final translation appears a second or two after a sentence ends; the preliminary version updates about every second, not word by word.
• Courtesy and privacy. Only you see the translation. Clozo asks you to tell other participants that their captions are translated, and not to use it in confidential meetings. Only caption text goes out for translation, with the previous sentence or two as context, after you agree: no audio, video, names or meeting links. Details in privacy in short.

Ready to set it up? Add Clozo from the Chrome Web Store and join your next call.

Questions and answers