Czech audio to text for interviews, lectures and calls
People who transcribe Czech are often students and researchers with interviews for a bakalářská or diplomová práce, journalists, people preparing minutes of a meeting, and companies with Czech-speaking clients. Outside the country, Czech families in Germany, Austria, the UK and the US bring old recordings of relatives, and English-speaking researchers bring interviews they have to work through with a dictionary at hand.
Czech is one of the languages the speech model handles well. Clear recordings usually come out as text that needs light editing. Moravian and Silesian regional speech is generally understood, though strong local forms need more review. Background noise and people talking over each other affect the result more than regional pronunciation does.
You do not need to prepare the file. A lecture recorded in Teams as MP4, a dictaphone recording in WAV or MP3, or a voice message from a phone can all be uploaded directly, and audio is taken from video automatically. Long recordings such as a two-hour seminar upload in parts, so a dropped connection does not mean starting again. Most files finish within a few minutes.
Spoken Czech versus written Czech
Everyday spoken Czech (obecná čeština) differs from the written standard. People say "dobrej" for "dobrý", "vokno" for "okno",. The transcript may follow what was said, or it may lean toward standard spelling, and in one file you can see both.
Decide what you need before you review. For a research interview where the exact wording matters, keep the colloquial forms and check them against the audio. For minutes or an article, standard Czech is usually the goal, and you can adjust the text while you listen. Click any line in the transcript to replay that moment. A sociolinguistic study may need every colloquial ending kept exactly, while a quote in a news article usually reads better in standard Czech.
Diacritics, Slovak and other details
The text is written with the full Czech alphabet: á, č, ď, é, ě, í, ň, ó, ř, š, ť, ú, ů, ý and ž. Check these points while you review.
- ů and ú: the spelling rule is usually followed, but rare words and names are worth a look.
- Names and places: surnames, small towns and company names are where most corrections happen.
- Slovak: Czech and Slovak are close, and auto-detect can mix them up. If the recording is in Slovak, choose Slovak in the upload box instead of Czech. If a conversation has both, pick the language spoken most and review the other speaker's parts.
- English words used in Czech, such as meeting, deadline or brand names, are usually kept in their English spelling.
- Numbers and dates can appear as digits or words.
Exports for Czech transcripts
TXT, DOCX (Word), SRT, VTT and CSV keep all Czech characters. The direct PDF export supports Western European characters only, and letters such as ř, ě and ů are outside that set. For a Czech transcript the PDF option opens a print-ready page that you save as PDF from your browser.
Word works for interview transcripts in a thesis appendix, where you can turn timestamps on or off. CSV is useful if you code interviews in a spreadsheet. SRT and VTT give you Czech subtitles for a video. On paid plans or with a Minute Pack, the transcript can show who said what, and you can rename speakers to Tazatel and Respondent or to real names.
RocketScribe transcribes Czech as Czech. If you need to read it in English, use the Google Translate link on the transcript. For an English summary, use the AI prompt export with ChatGPT or Claude.