The sudden increase in home working has led Google to invest heavily in its video chat tools, including Google Meet (formerly Hangouts Meet). Last month, it got the ability to accept multiple sign-up requests at once, and now Meet’s live captioning feature supports more languages.
Google Meet has supported automatic subtitles for over a year, converting audio to text in real time, but only when the speaker spoke in English. “We’re extending live captioning in Google Meet to French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish (Spain and Latin America) speakers,” Google said in a blog post. “Live captioning allows deaf and hard of hearing users, users with different primary languages, and users in noisy environments to more fully participate in meetings.”
Google says the functionality should appear in Meet today, and the rollout is expected to be completed in 15 days. Live captions are available on both personal and business accounts.
