Does Google Voice Transcribe Spanish?

Google Voice can transcribe voice mails in a number of different languages, including English, Spanish, French, Italian and Polish. Although Google does add new languages often, not all are available to use with its transcription services. If you have a caller who leaves voice mails in Spanish, you can change his default language by adding him as a contact and changing his language settings.

If you have friends or family members that routinely call your Google Voice number and leave voice mails in Spanish, Google's transcription services will not work correctly until you change their default language settings. To change the caller's language setting, you must first add him as a contact. From the Google Voice home page, click "Google Contacts." Add a new contact by clicking on "New Contact," fill out the relevant information and click "Save Now" to save the person to your contact list.

After the caller has been added to your contact list, click on "Contacts" and select the individual for whom you want to change the default language. With the individual selected, click on "Edit Google Voice Settings." Next to the default language setting, click on the drop-down box to select the language the caller speaks. If you want to change the default language to Spanish, select it from the drop-down list. Click "Save" to implement the new language setting. Google Voice will now transcribe voice mails from that contact in Spanish.

If you receive voice mails from a number of people in Spanish, you can choose to add them to a contact group instead. Create a new group by clicking on "New Group" from your contact list, naming the group and clicking "Save." Select all the contacts you want to add to the new group, click on the "Groups" button, and select the new group that you created to add them to it. Select the group, click on "Edit Google Voice Settings," and change the default transcription language for everyone in that group by selecting spanish from the drop-down menu. Whenever a caller from that group leaves you a voice mail, Google will automatically transcribe the message in Spanish.

Google Voice transcriptions are not 100 percent accurate. The quality of the transcription varies depending on a number of factors, including background noise, quality of connection and whether the caller uses a microphone. If Google Voice is not confident enough in the recording to transcribe the message, a "Transcript Not Available" message will appear. For instances in which a transcription is not available, you can choose to listen to the recorded audio message. Google Voice transcription won't automatically detect a language other than English, so ensure that you change the default language settings wherever it's applicable.