Understanding translate captions functionality

[Caryn_Manning]

Looking for help understanding the captions translation functionality.

We are on Education licensing. 

I started by reading this article.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/6643177746829-Viewing-captions-in-another-language#:~:text....

My questions are:

1. The article indicated you must be on one of the below licensing plans. If we were to upgrade our licensing for our hosts, would the 'attendee' in the meeting also need to be licensed in this way in order to view translated captions. It is our intention to have external attendees.

• ZoomOne Business Plus or ZoomOne Enterprise Plus account

2. Is this definitely translation? i.e.  we are speaking in English, and the attendee can choose to see translated captions in French.  

Appreciate any advice

[Bort · Accepted solution]

1. As with most Zoom features, only the host of the meeting must have the required license. Attendees are not considered. 
2. Yes, while the host is speaking English, the captions will appear in both English and the chosen language, such as French, German, Japanese, etc. 

I would suggest checking with your Account Executive to discuss options for acquiring this feature, as there are a few options available, or will be very soon. 

Hope that helps and please make sure to mark the solution as accepted if this information is what you needed.

[Caryn_Manning]

Thank you, this is most helpful!

[Type11]

Didn't want to poach the original topic but;

When I contacted Zoom about enabling the translated captions feature, the reply I got was that this is only supported on business accounts and it would not make too much sense in my case due to minimal license seat requirements (10 licenses at minimum)

I find this extremely unpleasant since I had been desperately  following Zoom website since the day this feature was announced (I am a foreigner living in China, periodically setting/attending meetings with Chinese speakers)

Is there a plan to provide this feature as an optional paid add-on to personal accounts as well? 

There are a lot of smaller companies that operate with just a couple of accounts, and enforcing a minimum of 10 license seats simply does not feel justified.

[Caryn_Manning]

Good news, this week we were informed it is being provided as an add-on and have been able to purchase the add on. 

Shout out to the Zoom account management team who actually suggested we wait while they found out the roll out times for us. 

[emasie]

Caryn,  appreciate your post.  How has the caption translation been working?

[KarriGB]

I have the translation add-on to a Pro Account, and I would say it is working inconsistently. Specifically:

1) As Host, I was only able to see the translations  of speakers if I had "show original and translated" enabled in the meeting. Otherwise, participants could see what I was saying (translated), but when they responded to me I could not see that in translation. 

2) The translation of other meeting participants disappeared after I did a screen share (ironically, the screen share was to show everyone in the meeting a slide on how to set it up so they could see the translations). Throughout the rest of the meeting I did not have "original and translated" captions, captions were only showed when I spoke (which I obviously don't need). They did not show when others spoke to me, the Host. They did continue to show (both) for others who had not done a screen share. (Yes, I tried everything to reset it, except re-starting the meeting for everyone). If I had not known a little bit of the language of the meeting participants' this would have been a disaster!

3) Frustratingly, Zoom Technical support has been friendly but unhelpful, sending me links to pages with instructions that are not the issue described. So I would really welcome solutions from this community if something like this has happened to you!!

[Sbowlin]

I purchased the add-on so that I can attend meetings in different languages, and read the live translations in English. It doesn't work like that. If you purchased live translation, the meetings have to be hosted by you in order for the translated captions to work. Makes no sense. In my own organization, we all speak the same language- only when we join other organizations' calls or webinars (which we don't host or have any control over), do we need live translation. Back to using Google Translate on the phone, I guess.

[Antilutron]

I purchased the subscription for translated captions and specifically asked if I would be able to use this add on as a participant hosted by another. I was told "yes," only to fond out that it doesn't work. I canceled the subscription and now I'm looking for way to have meetings I attend but don't host, translated in real time.

[KarriGB]

"Live translation" is different than "translated captions". Live translation means there is a person doing the translation, and so there is a different set-up/functionality within Zoom. There are essentially different channels for different languages. (I can't tell you exactly how this works because I have only participated in meetings where it happens, I haven't done it myself.)  However you can get translated captions (which happen in real-time) by going to "More>Captions" and setting the captions to be shown in your preferred language. It is confusing because it asks both the language you will be SPEAKING and the language TO SEE THE CAPTIONS. These are likely to be the same language (e.g. I am an English speaker, so I will speak in English and I want to see captions that are translated into English). You will want to somehow tell it that other people will be speaking French (or whatever)... but Zoom doesn't need/want that information from you. As long the other language speakers have also indicated the language that they are speaking (like you did with English), then it will work correctly.