Live captions and spoken translation for Microsoft Teams calls, running directly in your Chrome browser tab.
Microsoft Teams offers auto-captions through its accessibility menu, but only in a handful of languages and only as transcription—not translation. If you're on a call with colleagues in Milan who present in Italian, or joining a project sync where half the team speaks Mandarin, Teams will caption what it hears in the original language. You either follow along as best you can or wait for someone to summarize in English afterward.
Translext captures the audio from a Microsoft Teams browser tab and shows you live captions translated into your chosen language. It works in 70+ languages, runs entirely inside Chrome with no meeting bot to admit or recording stored on a server, and requires only that you open Teams as a web app instead of using the desktop client. The person speaking doesn't need to switch languages. You see what they're saying, in real time, without interrupting the flow of the meeting.
Translext captures audio from a Chrome tab, which means you need to run Microsoft Teams through its web app rather than the desktop application. When you join a meeting, choose the browser option instead of launching the desktop client—Teams will prompt you with this choice when you click a meeting link, or you can navigate directly to teams.microsoft.com. The web version supports all core meeting functions: video, screen sharing, participant controls, and chat. Once the tab is open and you're in a call, activate Translext on that tab. It listens to the meeting audio, transcribes it, translates it into your selected target language, and overlays captions on the Teams window. The desktop app's audio pipeline is separate from the browser, so Translext cannot access it.
Microsoft Teams is heavily used in organizations with offices across multiple countries, and plenty of calls involve people speaking different native languages. Translext is useful when you're the only non-native speaker on a call and others slip into their first language, when you're joining a quarterly review presented in German but you only studied it in school, or when a vendor in another country walks through technical details at full speed and you need to catch every specification. It's also useful when someone asks a question you didn't quite hear—instead of asking them to repeat it and slowing everyone down, you glance at the caption. Live machine translation makes mistakes, especially with jargon, fast speech, or thick accents, but it gives you enough context to stay engaged instead of sitting silently and hoping someone sends notes later.
Translext displays captions as a movable, resizable overlay inside the browser tab. Microsoft Teams already has a busy interface—participant thumbnails, a main video feed, toolbar controls at the bottom, and sometimes a sidepanel for chat or meeting notes. You'll want to position the caption box where it doesn't block faces or critical controls. Most people anchor it at the bottom center or lower-left, above the toolbar. The overlay updates line by line as speech is detected, transcribed, and translated. If you also enable spoken translation, Translext will read the translated text aloud through your device's speakers, which can clash with the original meeting audio unless you adjust volumes or use headphones for the live call and speakers for the translation voice. You can toggle captions or speech on and off mid-meeting without stopping the extension.
No. Translext is a Chrome extension that captures audio from a browser tab. The Microsoft Teams desktop app is a separate application with its own audio path that Chrome cannot access. You must open Microsoft Teams in a Chrome browser tab—either by choosing the web option when you click a meeting link, or by going to teams.microsoft.com and joining from there. The web app supports all standard meeting features, including video, screen sharing, and chat.
Technically yes, but you'll see two sets of captions on your screen. Teams displays its auto-captions as a banner along the top or bottom of the meeting window, and Translext shows its overlay wherever you position it. Teams captions transcribe in the original language; Translext translates. Most people turn off the Teams native captions to avoid clutter, but if you want to compare the original transcription and the translation side by side, running both is possible.
Translext hears and attempts to transcribe any audio playing in the tab, including audio from shared screens or videos presented during the meeting. The accuracy depends on how clearly that audio comes through—background music, overlapping sound, or low volume all make transcription harder. If the shared content includes narration or dialogue, Translext will try to caption and translate it just like live speech. It doesn't distinguish between a person speaking into their mic and a video file playing.
No. Translext runs entirely in your browser tab and only affects what you see and hear on your own device. It doesn't inject anything into the meeting itself, doesn't send messages, and doesn't appear in the participant list like a bot would. Other attendees see and hear you exactly as they would on any normal Teams call. The captions are private to your screen.
Translation lags a few seconds behind live speech because the audio has to be transcribed, then translated, then displayed or spoken. If multiple people speak at once, Translext will capture overlapping audio as a jumble and transcribe what it can make out, which often results in confused or incomplete captions. Machine translation also stumbles on rapid-fire technical terms, acronyms, or heavy accents. You'll get the gist of most conversations, but expect gaps and errors when the discussion gets chaotic.
Live captions and translated audio for anything playing in your browser tab. No bots to invite, nothing to upload.