If you are planning on hosting a meeting or webinar where multiple languages will be spoken, and you do not have the capacity to bring in a translator, the Zoom Automatic Translated Captions license is the best way to ensure all participants in your meeting can understand each other.
Normal automatic captions in zoom work by displaying the spoken audio language in its written form, example; English speaking to English text, French speaking to French text, etc.
With the translated caption license, speakers and listeners can choose which language they speak in, and which language they would like to have the captions translated to. This will allow Zoom to translate the audio from the speaker to text in a language the participants understand, and vice versa.
Enabling Translated Captions for your Account
To enabled automatic translated captions, you must first purchase an add on license.
Once that is complete, and the license has been added to your account you can enable it with the following steps:
- Navigate to https://yorku.zoom.us/ and login with your Passport York account
- Then on the left menu select Settings → Meeting → In Meeting (Advanced) https://yorku.zoom.us/profile/setting
- Turn on the option labeled Translated Captions
You can also enable the following options for a better translation experience in meetings:
- Automated captions: Allow users to enable automated captions in these languages in meetings
- Full Transcript: Allow viewing of full transcript in the in-meeting side panel
- Save Captions: Allow participants to save fully closed captions or transcripts
Turning on Translated Captions in a Meeting
- Once the meeting has started, click on “Show Captions”
- In the prompt that follows, choose the language that you will be speaking in, and the language in which you’d like to view your captions. In this example, English will be the assumed language. Ensure that the “Enable Translation” box is checked and click Save.
- and will now indicate that these services are available to remote participants.
- These settings can be verified by clicking on the arrow on the Captions button.
- Zoom will not auto detect a change in language. If the host changes speaking languages, then they will need to go to these Caption settings and change their Speaking Language to the other language. Otherwise, captions in the other language will be incorrect. In this example, the speaking language is changed to French. Captions will continue to be in English unless “Translation to” is also changed.
Once this is enabled, it is recommended to copy the following instructions in the chat:
1. To see multi-lingual captions, click on the “CC Show Captions” button
2. The button will now be labelled "CC Hide Captions". Click on the up arrow next to it.
3. Select your "Speaking Language" and your preferred caption language under "Translate to". Zoom can translate captions to the language of your preference if another participant has set a different speaking language.
4. You should see captions start to appear in the language you selected.
NOTE: Captions will not appear correctly if a participant speaks in a language different from the one that they set up as their "Speaker Language".