Otter AI Languages: What's Available and How to Fix the Wrong Transcript

Otter AI added 13 transcription languages on November 10, bringing its available total to 17. Hindi and 13 other languages are still coming, as is automatic switching between languages within a meeting. If your transcript is wrong, first check the recording language rather than asking AI to repair the summary.

That distinction matters for teams working across countries. An English-speaking meeting with unfamiliar product names needs a different fix from a German recording processed as English. A conversation that moves between languages creates a third problem, and today's announcement does not make all three disappear.

Which Otter languages are available now?

Otter's launch announcement separates languages available now from those still planned. The new language support carries no additional charge across its plans, though normal usage limits remain relevant.

Availability on November 10	Languages
Already supported	English, French, Spanish, Japanese
Newly available	Mandarin Chinese (Simplified), German, Italian, Cantonese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Dutch, Turkish, Vietnamese, Polish
Coming soon	Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Hebrew, Norwegian, Greek, Macedonian, Persian, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian

The eventual total is 31 languages. Seventeen are available now; 31 is the announced destination. Otter also labels its automatic multilingual option as coming soon, so do not plan a customer meeting around that capability until it appears in your account.

For an Indian team, this is a particularly important buying distinction. Hindi support on a roadmap does not establish that a Hindi-English sales call will work today. Even after Hindi arrives, support for each language separately would not, by itself, prove reliable handling of a conversation that keeps switching between them.

Change the language before your next recording

On desktop or web, open your profile, then Account Settings, then General. Choose the spoken language under Transcript Language. On mobile, the equivalent setting is Account Settings, Preferences, Conversation language. The default is shared across devices.

For a desktop or web import, choose the recording's language in the upload dialog. Mobile imports use your default instead. Otter's language instructions also flag an easy-to-miss detail: changing the language during an import updates the default for future conversations.

Imagine an English-speaking account manager importing a German customer interview. Selecting German may fix that file, but it also changes what the next meeting starts with. Put a language check beside the microphone check in your meeting routine, especially when several people share responsibility for uploading recordings.

That is a small operational habit with a useful payoff. A wrong default can make a good recording look like a bad speech model, and the resulting summary may be polished enough that nobody notices the problem immediately.

Fix an existing transcript in the wrong language

The conversation owner can reprocess the original audio on desktop or web: open the conversation, use the three-dot menu, select Change language, choose the language actually spoken and confirm Update language. Mobile does not currently offer this reprocessing step. A shared conversation's viewer needs the owner to do it.

Reprocessing also changes the future default. Once it finishes, check that setting again before the next recording.

This is different from translation. Selecting Japanese tells the recognizer to interpret Japanese speech; it does not turn an English recording into a Japanese transcript. If the source transcript is already correct and you need another language for a colleague, use a separate translation workflow and retain the original for comparison.

Do not ask a summarizer to guess its way through a corrupted transcript. First recover the words from the recording, then regenerate or review the downstream notes. Otherwise, every action item inherits the uncertainty of the first transcription error.

Check import limits before uploading a backlog

Language support does not remove the difference between recording meetings and importing files. The current pricing table lists Basic with 300 monthly transcription minutes, a 30-minute conversation limit and three lifetime file imports. Pro lists 1,200 monthly recording minutes, 90-minute conversations and ten monthly imports.

Business lists unlimited meetings and in-app recordings, but imported-file transcription has a separate 6,000-minute monthly allowance per user and a four-hour conversation limit. Read the detailed limits rather than treating an unlimited-import count as unlimited transcription minutes.

For a trial, use one short recording that represents the work you actually do. Uploading an archive first can consume your allowance before you have learned whether names, accents and technical terms survive accurately enough for your team.

Test the decisions in the meeting, not just the words

I would evaluate the new languages using a short, consented sample with a fluent reviewer. This is a suggested acceptance test, not a report of tests I have run. Otter's recording guidance recommends checking that transcription works before an important recording and allowing processing to finish after stopping.

Use the German interview example again. Include a product name, a price, a delivery date and a sentence that explicitly rejects a proposed action. Then compare the recording with both the transcript and the summary. A small error in a connective word can reverse a decision while leaving most of the sentence intact.

The useful measure is how much human correction is required before someone can rely on the notes. A readable transcript that assigns the wrong owner to a commitment is still expensive. Expanding language coverage earns Otter a place in more evaluations; keeping the actual decisions intact is what earns it a place in the workflow.

I’m Paras. I work at the intersection of AI, engineering and distribution.

I help technical teams explain product changes through useful writing that makes the practical differences clear.

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