Google Meet is among the biggest video conferencing apps at the moment. One of its most useful features, at least for me, is automatic call transcriptions. Up until now, though, the feature didn't support live translations, unlike captions in apps like YouTube and Translate. Google is finally changing that, as previously announced during Google I/O 2021.

A select few on certain Google Workspace editions are now able to enjoy Translated Captions, a beta feature that transcribes spoken English into French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. Translated captions are currently available for English only right now, so if people in your call are speaking another language and you want to understand them, you're out of luck.

According to Google's support site for translated captions, they will only be available on the web version for now. If you're a Workspace admin looking into trying them out, you'll need to fill out a form provided by Google. As a Workspace user with access to translated captions, you need to go to Settings -> Captions -> Translated captions to turn them on.

It's tricky to translate live text on the fly, so it might take a little bit of time before Google gets it just right and rolls out the feature more widely. In the meantime, you'll have to keep using old, boring English captions.

[appbox googleplay com.google.android.apps.meetings]