How to Translate Live Captions in Microsoft Teams 

Glad it was helpful!

Hi, Despite this being available for free throughout COVID, Microsoft have decided to move this feature to the Teams Premium licensing. So if your account has not had a Teams Premium licence provisioned to it, you will not be able to access translation component.

That's a great question. I can't say that I have the capacity to test it out at the moment, but I would guess that it would provided the Teams Desktop client is being run remote machine. I couldn't find anything either way to confirm or deny it in the Microsoft documentation. 😓

Not a silly question at all. Teams Premium is one of Microsoft's commercial offerings and is an add-on on top of M365 Commercial. You would likely need to purchase this as a business through either Microsoft directly or a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP).

Not a problem. I've done a little bit of digging around and the latest information states that there isn't a notification for simply turning on captions (without translation). Enabling transcription of the meeting or translation of the captions does (as this requires transcription to be enabled). Essentially, when the transcription is initially activated, attendees are given a heads up, but they aren't made aware of which individuals are using the feature or when people turn it on or off. I have my meetings set to always enable transcription for this reason. That way everyone can feel comfortable in enabling captions should they need them.

@@paulomalley Thank you so much for the reply! So simply, if transcription or translation feature is not turned on, any participant can open live captions without notifying other people in the meeting; if either of them is turned on, there will be a notification, but no one does know who that person is.

That is my understanding from the documentation. I'm not in a position right now to test it and confirm unfortunately, but I'm pretty confident. You could test by starting a meeting and inviting your personal account to the meeting to test...

@@paulomalley Okay get it! Thanks again for your help!

That's an interesting question and I actually am not 100% sure on. I know that Teams doesn't specifically save the captions, but does save the transcription if you have that enabled. I don't have the ability to test this at the moment, but it might be worth running a demo recording and seeing if the transcription can be translated after the call or not.

Thanks for the comment. I will look into this.. I hope this can be done, if not, I would need to seek another solution…

@@bongo2565Hey man, any news on that?

No problem!

Sorry, can you explain in more detail what you are seeing? Are you meaning that you aren't seeing the option to change the caption language? If so, that would likely mean that your account does not have access to Teams Premium. Live captions are available to all but the real time translation feature has become a Teams Premium feature.

According to the documentation, the feature is still there. - support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/use-live-captions-in-microsoft-teams-meetings-4be2d304-f675-4b57-8347-cbd000a21260 Is it possible that your IT Admin has removed it?

It's a paid feature now. Was only free first half of 2023

​@@juanc4065 Hi, could you please link to the page where you've seen this? We are looking to use this feature for bilingual onboarding at my work, but I can't seem to find any info on it

I have the business standard and it does not have the option of translation. This was one reason I chose m365 . It's so disappointing. It seems only the business premium has the transition.

That likely means that your account does not have a Teams Premium license assigned to it. Captions are free for all, but the translation now requires an additional license. I would suggest connecting with your IT Admin to see if they can assign this to you.

From a licensing perspective, only the meeting organiser requires the Premium licensed in order for the entire meeting to be able to use them. Translations will be for all users. "When the organizer of a Teams meeting or live event is licensed for Teams Premium, the Live translation (for captions), advanced Meetings protection, and advanced Webinars features are extended to all meeting participants, including external and guest users." learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-add-on-licensing/licensing-enhance-teams#which-users-should-be-assigned-teams-premium-licenses

It will be amazing if it kept private… people tend to judge

Making use of a feature to ensure you are able to understand and follow the conversation should not be something people judge you on. That sounds horrible. I personally have all of my meetings default to captions on (my current workplace uses Zoom). I had one or two people comment on it initially, but now it is accepted as normal. My original reason for turning them on was others having poor microphones and bad audio quality. I simply explained to them that I prefer to have captions available for everyone to ensure everyone is included in our discussion. This way, not only do I get to make use of the captions, but it normalises it for others as well.

Are you asking if the language you select for translation is confidential? Teams does not disclose that information to anyone and never has. However, to use captions on a call, transcription must be enabled. Everyone on the call is informed of this, but they do not know who specifically turned on the captions. This is a legal requirement because it involves recording people's speech.

Hi there, According to the documentation, the feature is still there. - support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/use-live-captions-in-microsoft-teams-meetings-4be2d304-f675-4b57-8347-cbd000a21260 However, Microsoft have decided to move this feature to the Teams Premium licensing. So if your IT Admin has not provisioned that licence for you, you will not be able to access this. I am not deceiving anybody and the video is still relevant. Thank you.