Google Meet's built-in feature that translates a speaker's words into on-screen text in a language you choose, in real time — generally available since January 2022 and now covering dozens of languages, on eligible paid Workspace plans.
Last verified · 2026-08-21 · by Moe Ameen
Live translated captions are a feature inside Google Meet, not a separate product. When they are on, Meet transcribes whoever is speaking and shows that speech as on-screen text translated into a language the viewer picks — a speaker presenting in Japanese can be read in English as they talk. It is text only; the audio is untouched. Google launched it in beta in 2021 and made it generally available in January 2022.
The initial release translated English meetings into Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German. Google has widened the set steadily since, including a 52-language expansion in June 2024 that pushed coverage to dozens of spoken languages and thousands of translation pairs, with additions continuing — Cantonese arrived in December 2025. Related refinements landed alongside: participants can scroll back through caption history instead of losing lines as they pass, and mobile viewers of a Meet live stream can choose their own caption language and change it mid-stream.
Access is gated by Workspace edition. Translated captions require the meeting to be organized by someone on an eligible paid plan — Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, and select education tiers — while ordinary same-language closed captions are free for all users. Don't confuse translated captions with Google Meet's newer speech translation, a Gemini-powered feature that speaks an AI voice in the listener's language; that one covers fewer languages and began reaching businesses in early 2026.
The point of the feature is comprehension in a live conversation — meetings, webinars, classes, interviews — for people who don't share a language. It is an accessibility and inclusion layer, tuned for the moment the words are spoken. It is not a content tool: the captions render for participants and vanish when the call ends, and there is no export that turns a multilingual meeting into a post. Treat specifics as a snapshot and confirm the current language list on Google's Meet Help page.
Here is the honest boundary: Google Meet captions the conversation while it is happening, then throws the text away. The moment the call ends, the multilingual comprehension you had is gone, and the recording you kept is a long file with no clips, no burned-in captions, and no posts. [Kompozy](/) is built to take exactly that recording and turn it into content. Feed a recorded Meet webinar, interview, or panel in as a source and Kompozy's [Clipped Shorts](/glossary/output-buckets) cuts the long call into vertical, feed-ready moments, then burns on word-synced captions — the kind that actually travel on a sound-off feed, unlike Meet's live captions that only existed on screen during the call.
Where Meet's translated captions hinted at multilingual reach, Kompozy makes it real for the audience that was not in the room. Because one source can be regenerated in a different language's copy and voice, the same panel becomes an English clip and a Spanish clip, plus a brand-exact [Carousel](/glossary/hyperframes) of the key takeaways, a blog recap, and an email newsletter — all governed by one [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief) so the voice holds across languages and formats. [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) then schedules and publishes the batch across the eight social platforms plus blog and email, behind a per-post review gate. Meet handles the live translation; Kompozy handles everything that turns the meeting into published, multi-language content.
They translate the current speaker's words into a language you choose and display them as on-screen text in real time, so people in a call who don't share a language can follow along. The captions are text only and do not change the audio.
Translated captions require the meeting organizer to be on an eligible paid Google Workspace edition — Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, and select education tiers. Same-language closed captions are free for all users.
Not as a content-ready subtitle file. The captions render on screen during the meeting and are meant for live comprehension, not distribution. To put captions on a clip an audience will watch later, you caption the recording separately — a tool like Kompozy burns word-synced captions onto shorts cut from the call and publishes them.
Translated captions are on-screen text in your chosen language and cover dozens of languages. Speech translation is a newer, Gemini-powered feature that plays an AI-generated voice in the listener's language across a smaller set of languages. Captions you read; speech translation you hear.
Record the meeting, then drop the file into Kompozy as a source. Kompozy cuts it into captioned Clipped Shorts, builds a carousel, a blog, and a newsletter in your Persona Brief voice, can regenerate them in another language, and schedules and publishes the set across the eight social platforms plus blog and email.