How usable is an Afrikaans transcript
Afrikaans has much less training data than English or Dutch, so the transcript is a usable draft that needs review. Clear recordings often come out readable, with errors in names, places, slang and less common words. Check those every time before you share the text.
One speaker near the microphone in a quiet room gives the best result: a lecture, a sermon recorded close to the speaker, a dictated report, a one-on-one interview. A braai conversation, a phone call on speaker, people talking over each other or speech over music gives a weaker draft that needs more correcting.
A quick way to review: play the file at normal speed while following the highlighted line, fix what you hear, and click a line to replay any part you are unsure of. Then do a second pass for names, numbers and quotes. For text that will be published, submitted to a university or used as evidence, have a fluent Afrikaans reader check the final version.
Afrikaans, Dutch and auto-detect
Afrikaans grew out of Dutch, and the two still share much of their vocabulary. On auto-detect, the model can label Afrikaans speech as Dutch and then write Dutch spelling: ik instead of ek, het instead of die, een instead of 'n. A short voice note or a clip that opens in English is also easily misjudged.
This page preselects Afrikaans to avoid that. If your transcript looks like Dutch, check the language setting and run the file again with Afrikaans selected.
Afrikaans spelling: what to check
These are the details a review most often has to fix in an Afrikaans transcript.
- The indefinite article 'n, with its apostrophe, may come out as n, an or een.
- Diacritics such as ê, ë, ô and ï (sê, wêreld, geëet, môre, reën) may be missing or wrong.
- The double negative, as in Ek weet nie wat hy wil hê nie, may lose its second nie.
- Compound words may be split into two, or two words joined into one.
- Diminutives ending in -tjie or -ie (koppie, hondjie, mandjie) may lose their ending or be spelled the Dutch way.
- Numbers may come out as digits or written out (een-en-twintig), so pick one style and keep it.
- Kaaps, Namibian Afrikaans and other regional speech may be written closer to standard Afrikaans than it was spoken, or misheard.
Afrikaans and English in one recording
Many South Africans switch between Afrikaans and English in one conversation, sometimes within a sentence. Mixed speech is transcribed, but some English words may get Afrikaans-style spelling or the other way around. Choose the language by what dominates the file. If a meeting is mostly English, choose English for that file.
Typical uploads come from South Africa and Namibia: university lectures, church services, farm and business meetings, journalist and research interviews, and podcasts. Afrikaans speakers in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Netherlands upload family voice notes, interviews with older relatives, and YouTube videos that need Afrikaans subtitles.
Uploading and exporting
WhatsApp voice notes, phone recordings and MP4 or MOV videos upload directly; you can also record in the browser or import a YouTube or TikTok link. The transcript arrives in timestamped paragraphs, and the player highlights the current line. Click a line to replay it and fix the text in place.
Export TXT, DOCX, PDF, SRT, VTT or CSV, with timestamps and speaker names on or off. For an English reading, use the Google Translate link on the transcript or the AI prompt export with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Speaker labels are available on paid plans or with a Minute Pack. Your files are never used to train AI models.