Transcription in more than one language: choosing the coverage

Transcription in more than one language comes down to one choice in Dalm, and it is not the language: you never set one. What you choose is the coverage. “European languages” is the default — “Faster and more accurate. English, Russian, German, French, Spanish and twenty more.” “More languages” is “Slower, but over a hundred languages.” You can switch in Settings at any time. How well one recording that moves between two languages comes out has not been measured, so this page makes no claim about it, and nothing is translated. The speech is recognised on your Mac and no audio is sent anywhere; the text is synced to our servers automatically. There is a Free plan.

Four situations where more than one language comes up

• A team that works in two languages. Meetings inside the team are in one language, calls with clients in another. No language is set for a recording, so there is nothing to switch. If both languages are among the five the app names, the default coverage is enough. Names and terms that cross from one language to the other go in the dictionary, which a team shares.
• Meetings that are not in English. If your language is not a European one, choose “More languages”: it is slower and the download is larger. The app’s own interface stays in English or Russian either way.
• An interview or a file in another language. Bring the file into the app; its speech is recognised the same way, by whichever coverage is set now. The steps for a file are on turning a recording into text. If the coverage is the wrong one, change it before the file goes in.
• Dictation in a second language. The same key and the same coverage: one choice covers dictation, meetings and files alike. How dictation works is on a page of its own.

How Dalm handles languages, step by step

1. The first time you open the app, it asks “What languages do you speak?” and offers two kinds of coverage, with “European languages” as the default. Under them: “You can change this any time — Settings, the “Recognition” section.”
2. The coverage you chose is downloaded: 461 MiB for “European languages”, from 140 MiB to 1.5 GiB for “More languages”, depending on your Mac — every download is listed here. From then on the speech is recognised on your Mac, and the text of each recording is synced to our servers automatically.
3. You record, dictate or bring in a file without setting a language. Nothing fixes one language for the whole recording: “European languages” is never told one, and “More languages” works it out again as the recording goes on.
4. To change the coverage, open Settings, “Recognition”, where the wider choice is named “All languages”. The new one downloads in the background with a note in the corner, and the old one keeps recognising until it is ready.
5. Transcripts you already have stay as they are. The audio is deleted once the text exists, so an old recording cannot be run through the new coverage; the change applies to new recordings.

Three choices every multilingual tool makes

The choice	One way	The other way	In Dalm
The language	Set by hand before each recording: you know what you get, but a recording in another language comes out wrong	Detected: nothing to set and nothing to forget	Never set: the model is not told a language; you set the coverage once
The model	A narrower one for a group of languages: faster	A wide one for many languages at once: covers more, slower	Both, one at a time: “European languages” by default, “More languages” when you need it (461 MiB against 140 MiB–1.5 GiB)
What you get	A transcript in the language that was spoken	A translation into another language	A transcript only: speech is not translated, by design

The table compares ways of working, not products. What leaves your computer with each kind of tool is set out on the speech to text page.

Which coverage fits the languages you speak

• All your languages are among the five the app names — English, Russian, German, French, Spanish: “European languages”, the default.
• A European language that is not among the five. The app names five. Start with the default coverage; if the words come out wrong, change it in Settings — the old coverage keeps working while the new one downloads.
• A language from outside Europe, or a mix where one is. “More languages”: one choice covers them all, at the cost of speed and a larger download.

What is not measured, and what is not done

• One recording, two languages — not measured; no claim either way. Names and terms from the other language can go in the dictionary.
• Translation — none; the words are written down in the language they were spoken in.
• Summary language — summaries and documents are built for meetings in English and Russian. In the app, a summary’s headings follow the interface language; in its text — what is saved and what documents are built from — the headings and labels the app fills in come out in Russian for any meeting not in English. The points themselves are meant to be written in the meeting’s language; that, and the language of documents, has not been checked on a live recording.
• Language counts — they come from the speech models; we have not checked each language ourselves.
• Accuracy by language — no figures are published here.
• The app’s own interface — English and Russian.

Free, Pro or Team: starting in your languages

The Free plan has no end date, and it is not a trial. Dalm needs a Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later and an account; while it is not public, the waitlist is the way to get it. What the paid plans add, and what they cost, is on the pricing page. In a team the dictionary is shared, so a name or a term from the second language is spelled the same way for everyone — how a team works.