How to translate Google Meet captions into your language

Which Google Meet translation method fits your call?

Meet can show live captions for free. Translating them is the part that depends on plans. Here is the short version:

Not sure whether the meeting qualifies? Open the caption settings (step 1 below). If you see the translated captions option, use it. If not, go to the Clozo steps.

Step by step: turn on Google Meet's translated captions

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 says the feature is gradually rolling out and may not be available yet. Participants can use it if the meeting is organized by a user with an eligible edition.

1. Join the meeting on a computer.
2. Click More options > Settings > Captions.
3. Under Language of the meeting, make sure the language people actually speak is selected.
4. Turn on Translated captions.
5. Pick the language you want to translate into.

Google lists plans that don't include translated captions, among them Business Starter, Enterprise Starter and Essentials, Workspace Individual, and Google One plans. If your meeting is on one of those, use the Clozo steps instead.

Step by step: translate Google Meet live with Clozo

Clozo is a Chrome extension. It doesn't listen to audio. It reads the captions Meet already shows, has the text translated by AI, and displays original and translation one under the other, with the speaker's name, right in the call. Only you see it. No bot joins the call, and neither you nor the host needs Google Workspace or a paid Google plan.

1. Add Clozo to Chrome from the Chrome Web Store. You need Chrome 116 or newer on Windows, macOS, Linux or ChromeOS.
2. Join a call on meet.google.com.
3. Clozo turns on Meet's captions by itself (the setting "Turn on captions automatically" is on by default).
4. The first time, Clozo asks before anything is sent. Click Agree and translate. If you choose "Not now", you'll see captions but no translation.
5. The translation appears about a second after each sentence ends. By default Clozo translates into the language of your browser.

You don't pick the spoken language in Clozo. It detects it from the caption text. You only choose the language to translate into. Clozo works with every language Meet can caption and offers 76 target languages.

Adjust how it looks

Click the yellow pill in the call to open the menu. There you can switch between "Both" and "Translation only", choose one of four text sizes, and place the captions at the bottom, at the top, or anywhere you drag them. The pill also shows your target language and, on the free plan, the minutes left today. Alt+Shift+T turns translation on or off.

Use the live transcript

"Open live transcript" in the pill menu opens a transcript in Chrome's side panel, with speaker, time, original and translation for each entry. You can use "Search" and "Copy". Export as TXT or PDF is part of Pro. The transcript lives only in the browser's memory and is gone when Chrome closes.

Details are on how Clozo works, and the free and Pro limits are on the pricing section.

Other ways to get Google Meet live translation

Two more options exist, both from Google, both with conditions.

• Chrome's Live Caption and Live Translate (Windows and Mac). Per Google's Chrome help, 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, the captions are sent to Google.
• Speech translation in Meet. This is spoken translation in a voice like the speaker's, not captions. Google lists plans such as Google AI Pro, Google AI Ultra and Business Standard/Plus, with a 90-minute limit per meeting. The languages are English paired with Spanish, French, German, Portuguese or Italian, one pair per meeting.

If you want text you can read at your own pace in a language outside those lists, or the meeting's plan doesn't include Google's features, Clozo covers that gap. If you need a translated voice, Clozo isn't the right tool because it only translates text.

Common problems and fixes

The translation makes no sense

Meet captions one spoken language at a time, the one set in its caption settings. If people speak Spanish but Meet's captions are set to English, both the captions and the translation will be nonsense. In the call, go to More options > Settings > Captions > Language of the meeting and choose the language people really speak. Clozo's pill menu has a help entry, "Captions in the wrong language?", that explains this.

I don't see the translated captions option

Your meeting probably isn't on an eligible plan, or the feature hasn't reached it yet. Use Clozo instead.

No captions appear

In Meet, click "Turn on captions" at the bottom, or press c to show or hide captions. Captions turn on only for you. With Clozo, check that "Turn on captions automatically" is enabled in its settings.

Translation stopped in the middle of the call

On Clozo's free plan, you get 15 minutes of translation a day, renewed at midnight UTC. Only minutes in which something is translated count. At 2 minutes left you get a warning. After that, Meet's original captions stay visible. Pro offers 50 hours a month.

A notice says Clozo can't read the captions

This happens if Meet changes its page. Clozo shows a notice in the call and can receive updated page selectors as data, without an extension update.

The meeting switches languages

Meet captions one language at a time, so change the caption language in Meet when the language changes.

Honest limits of translated captions

• Clozo works only in Google Meet in Chrome on a computer. It doesn't work with Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Webex, nor in Meet's mobile apps, Firefox or Safari.
• It translates text, not voice. It doesn't record, summarize or take meeting notes, and Meet's chat isn't translated.
• It can only translate what Meet captions. Accents, crosstalk, background noise, names and jargon affect caption quality, and machine translation can contain mistakes.
• The translation arrives about a second after a sentence ends, not word by word.

On privacy: Clozo sends only caption text (with the previous sentence or two as context) for translation, only after you agree, and processes it in the EU. No audio, video, participant names or meeting links are sent. See privacy in short. Clozo asks you to tell the other participants that your captions are translated, and not to use it in confidential meetings.

Questions and answers