Farsi, Persian and the setting to choose
Farsi (فارسی) is what speakers call their own language. The word comes from Pars, the region in southern Iran that the Greeks called Persis, which is where the English name Persian comes from. Many people in Iran and the diaspora say Farsi even when speaking English, which is why it is often the word typed into a search box.
In the upload box the language is listed as Persian, code fa. This page preselects it, so you can upload straight away. There is no separate Farsi option, and none is needed: Farsi and Persian are the same language.
Set the language yourself rather than relying on auto-detect. A short WhatsApp or Telegram voice note, or a recording that opens with a greeting in English, gives auto-detect little to go on, and Farsi can be mistaken for Arabic or Urdu because the three share many loanwords.
Spoken Farsi versus written Farsi
Everyday Farsi, especially the Tehran variety heard in most podcasts and videos, is far from the formal written language. People say میگه (mige) where a book would write میگوید, or نمیدونم (nemidoonam) for نمیدانم. The model sometimes writes the spoken form, sometimes the formal one, and occasionally mixes both in a single paragraph.
Decide early which style you need. For subtitles and quotes, spoken forms usually read more naturally. For a report or an academic appendix, many people convert to formal written Persian while they review. Either way, pick one style and apply it through the whole transcript so readers are not distracted by switches.
Accent adds another layer. Speakers from Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad or Tabriz, and Azerbaijani or Kurdish speakers talking in Farsi, keep their own vowels and rhythm. The draft will still be readable, but expect more words to fix than with a Tehran newsreader.
Finglish, digits and right-to-left text
A few practical points about the text itself before you share it.
- The transcript is in Persian script. It does not produce Finglish (Persian typed in Latin letters, like 'salam, chetori'). If you need a romanized version, paste the text into an AI assistant with the AI prompt export and ask for one, then check it.
- Numbers may come out as Persian digits (۱۴۰۳), Western digits (1403) or words. Solar Hijri dates are written the way they were spoken, so confirm years and dates against the audio.
- Persian is written right to left. When you paste a DOCX or TXT export into another document, set the paragraph direction to right-to-left if punctuation lands at the wrong end of a line.
- English brand names and technical terms may appear in Latin letters or spelled out in Persian, sometimes both ways in one file.
How good is the draft
Persian has less training data behind it than the big European languages. A clear recording with one speaker gives a usable draft that still needs a careful read. Group conversations, satellite TV clips with music under the voice, and phone calls produce weaker text, and names of people and places are the most common errors.
Review with the player running. The current line is highlighted, and clicking any line plays it from that point so you can correct the word in place. For long recordings, fix the parts you plan to quote first.
Exporting and reading it in another language
Export TXT or DOCX for reading and quoting, SRT or VTT for Farsi subtitles on a video, and CSV for research coding. Timestamps can be turned on or off when you export. Speaker labels are available on paid plans or with a Minute Pack.
RocketScribe writes down the Farsi that was spoken and does not translate it. To follow it in English, use the Google Translate link on the transcript, or the AI prompt export to ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for a summary or translation. Your files are never used to train AI models.