Technology & Quality

AI Assists.
Humans Guarantee.Where AI Stops …… We Begin.

We select the best AI engine for each language and subject - not one tool for everything. Our purpose here is also to educate you on how AI is changing translation, so you can make informed decisions about your content.

Human expertise is strong in every language we offer. AI is an alternate means of cost reduction for clients who need it. For rare Indian languages, Arabic dialects and African minority languages - where AI has no coverage - human translation is the only option. There is no substitute.

7
CAT tools in our stack
249
Languages via AI coverage
TEP
Triple-layer quality process

Understanding AI in Translation - A Quick Guide

The translation industry has changed significantly in recent years. Here is what the key terms mean:

AI Translation Engine
Software that translates text automatically without a human translator - the technology behind Google Translate, DeepL and similar tools.
Machine Translation (MT)
Another name for AI translation. The two terms mean the same thing.
Large Language Model (LLM)
A more advanced type of AI - like ChatGPT. Originally created for general conversation, but now increasingly used for translation, particularly for content requiring cultural nuance.
Post-Editing
When a human translator reviews and corrects the AI translation output before final delivery. This is now increasingly practised for a lot of published content.
CAT Tool
Computer-Assisted Translation tool - specialist software that stores previous translations in a Translation Memory, so consistent terminology is reused automatically across projects. Not the same as an AI engine.
Translation Memory (TM)
A database that stores every sentence ever translated in a project. When the same or similar sentence appears again, the TM suggests the stored translation - saving time and ensuring consistency.

Our AI Engine Stack

Rather than committing to one provider, we intend to route each project to the engine that performs best for that language and subject. Here is what we use, and why.

DeepL logo

DeepL

Germany
European Languages

The highest-quality engine for European languages. Preferred by legal and publishing professionals for its natural, precise output.

French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Romanian, Czech, Hungarian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Greek and more

Google Translate logo

Google Translate

USA
249 Languages

Widest language coverage - 249 languages. Quality is inferior to DeepL for European languages but it is often the only option for some of the rarer languages.

African languages, Indian dialects, South-East Asian, Polynesian, Creole, Central Asian languages

Microsoft Translator logo

Microsoft Translator

USA
Enterprise & CJK

Strong for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic. Already part of most corporate IT setups - good for enterprise clients.

Chinese (all variants), Japanese, Korean, Arabic, enterprise language pairs

ModernMT logo

ModernMT

Italy
Adaptive Learning

Learns and improves from every human correction it receives. Gets better over time for each client - the more we work together, the more accurate it becomes.

200+ languages with real-time adaptive translation memory

Claude / GPT-4o logo

Claude / GPT-4o

USA
Creative & Legal

Advanced AI for content requiring nuance, tone and cultural sensitivity. Claude ranked #1 for translation quality in an independent international competition in 2024.

High-resource European, Asian and Middle Eastern languages - creative, legal and context-sensitive content

Sarvam AI logo
Indian Language Specialist

Sarvam AI - Built in India, for Indian Languages

Sarvam AI was founded by the same researchers who built India's leading Indian-language AI at IIT Madras, and was selected by the Government of India as part of its national AI programme in 2025. Unlike Western tools that add Indian languages as an afterthought, Sarvam was built specifically for Indian languages from the ground up - covering all 22 constitutionally recognised languages with production-quality results.

Document Translation

Sarvam-Translate

Coverage: All 22 Indian languages
Manipuri, Santali & Kashmiri are the weakest - tokeniser support still improving.

Specifically designed for full documents - legal papers, government forms, policy documents - preserving formatting, tables and cultural context. Outperforms models 3–4× its size on structured content.

Audio Transcription

Saaras v3

Coverage: All 22 Indian languages
Handles code-mixed audio and real-world recording quality.

The only credible speech-to-text tool for Indian languages. Auto-detects language mid-sentence, handles phone call quality audio, and understands speakers switching between Hindi, Tamil or any Indian language and English.

Video Dubbing

Sarvam Dub

Coverage: 11 major Indian languages
Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia, Assamese.

AI dubbing that preserves the natural rhythm and emotion of the original speaker. Significantly more natural than alternatives because timing is built into the audio generation itself.

DTP Workflow

Sarvam Studio

Coverage: All 22 Indian languages
Handles PDFs, Word, InDesign - preserving formatting and structure.

End-to-end translation workflow for structured documents. Preserves tables, images and document structure. Directly relevant to our DTP capability for Indian-language publishing.

Our CAT Tool Stack →

We have been using these specialised softwares to manage our work effectively for superior quality, since years.

CAT tools store every translation in a Translation Memory - so terminology stays consistent across your projects and repeat content is never translated twice.

SDL Trados Studio logo

SDL Trados Studio

#1 by market share

The industry standard - about 70% of agencies use or accept it. Pharmaceutical, legal and enterprise clients often specifically require it. Our primary platform for complex multi-language projects.

MemoQ logo

MemoQ

Strong #2

More user-friendly than Trados with excellent built-in quality checks. Widely used in life sciences, finance and gaming. Our preferred tool for life sciences and pharmaceutical work.

Wordfast logo

Wordfast

Quite popular among freelancers

Works with the same file formats as Trados. More affordable and cross-platform. Useful for projects involving our wider translator network.

Four Levels of Service

Every project is assigned the right level of human involvement for its content type and risk level - as per client preference and our expert recommendation.

AI produces a first draft; a qualified subject-matter translator then fully edits and corrects it to publication standard - rewriting where needed, checking terminology, and ensuring the translation reads as if it were written in the target language from the start.

Best for: Technical manuals, website content, business documents, most published material

The languages that define our competitive advantage are precisely the ones where AI tools are weakest. Our human network covers the ground that technology cannot.

⚖️

Human Expertise Where It Counts

For pharmaceutical/ICF, legal, medical and sensitive content - our professional TEP process ensures human expertise at every stage. We always advise clients on the appropriate level of human involvement for their specific content and risk level.

File Formats We Accept

Send us your files in any of these formats - including all major CAT tool, MS Office, Adobe, QuarkXPress and subtitle formats

MS Office
DOCXDOCXLSXXLSPPTXPPTRTFTXTODT
Adobe Suite
InDesign (.indd)InDesign (.idml)Illustrator (.ai)Photoshop (.psd)FrameMaker (.fm, .mif)PDFEPS
QuarkXPress
QXPQXDQXT
CAT Tool Formats
.sdlxliff.sdlproj.mqxliff.txml.xlf.xliff.tmx.tbx
Web & Software
HTMLXMLJSONYAMLPORESX.strings (iOS).xml (Android).arb (Flutter)
Subtitle & Audio
SRTVTTSTLSUBASSSBV

AI in Subtitling & Audio/Video

Large numbers of people now watch video content with subtitles on. The market for AI-generated subtitles and transcription was about $4 billion globally in 2025 - and AI dubbing has reduced the cost of dubbing a video from $100–200 per minute to as little as $1–2 per minute (probably less than a hundredth of the original cost), making video localisation accessible to clients and individuals who could not afford it earlier.

Nevertheless, this doesn't completely obliterate the value of human intervention and/or actual human voiceover.

🎙️
Transcription
AI converts spoken audio to text with timestamps and speaker identification. Accuracy drops sharply on overlapping voices, heavy background noise, or scrambled/distorted audio - this needs to be manually reviewed for any possible errors.
📝
Subtitle Generation
Creates timecoded subtitle files (SRT, VTT, STL) directly from the audio files. Commonly struggles with overlapping speakers, fast-paced dialogue, and natural sentence-break punctuation - this needs to be manually reviewed for any possible errors.
🌐
Subtitle Translation
Translates subtitle text into target language while preserving all timecodes. In cases of specific instruction with character-count limits, these need to be manually edited in addition to a normal manual review.
🎬
AI Dubbing
Replaces the original speaker's voice with an AI-generated voice in another language - now commercially viable at a fraction of traditional costs. Both male and female voices are easily manageable, with a wide range of variation and editing options.
For Indian Language Audio

Sarvam Saaras v3 is the only credible transcription tool for Indian languages at production quality. It automatically detects which Indian language is being spoken, handles code-mixed audio (when a speaker switches between Hindi and English mid-sentence - extremely common in Indian business conversations), and works on real-world audio quality including phone calls and conference recordings. For Indian-language video dubbing, Sarvam Dub supports 11 major Indian languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia and Assamese) with significantly more natural results than any alternative.

The Best Translation Industry AI Tools - Transcription, Subtitling & Audio Recording

A practical, parallel comparison of the leading tools in each category - what each one is genuinely good at, where it falls short, and which languages it covers best. The information below reflects what has been verified up to May 2026.

1. Transcription

OpenAI Whisper logo

OpenAI Whisper

99 languages (incl. Afrikaans, Amharic, Hausa, Swahili, Somali, Yoruba, Shona, Assamese, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Nepali and more)
Completely free and open-source
Can run locally for full data privacy
By far the widest raw language coverage of any tool here
Requires technical/command-line setup
No built-in speaker labelling or editor
Accuracy drops on noisy audio and rarer dialects

Best for: Rare and lower-resource languages where commercial tools simply have no coverage - African minority languages (such as Afrikaans, Amharic, Hausa, Swahili, Somali, Yoruba and Shona), smaller Indian dialects (such as Assamese, Sanskrit, Sindhi and Nepali).

Otter.ai logo

Otter.ai

English, Spanish, French, German (beta), Japanese, Chinese Simplified (beta)
Best-in-class live meeting transcription
Direct Zoom, Teams and Google Meet integration
Generous free tier - 300 minutes/month
Narrowest language range of the three
Not built for batch-processing (handling many pre-recorded files at once, rather than live) multilingual files
Limited usefulness outside a live-meeting context

Best for: English-language business meetings and calls, where real-time transcription during the call matters more than language breadth.

Happy Scribe logo

Happy Scribe

120-150+ languages (incl. English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Arabic, Mandarin, Bengali, Galician, Macedonian, Icelandic - Happy Scribe does not publish one single complete list, so this is a representative subset, not the full count)
AI speed plus optional human-reviewed accuracy
Broadcast-grade compliance (BBC, Netflix, FCC, ADA)
Bundles translation and subtitling in the same workflow
Mid-tier pricing above pure-AI tools
Full accuracy benefit requires the paid human-review tier

Best for: Multi-language projects spanning dozens of languages in one batch, especially when the output flows straight into subtitling or translation afterwards.

2. Subtitling

VEED.io logo

VEED.io

150+ languages for subtitle generation (incl. English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Swahili, Zulu and more)
Fastest, simplest workflow for social/creator content
One-click auto-captions with brand-kit styling
Fully browser-based, no install
Accuracy ceiling (~95%) below dedicated enterprise tools
Free tier capped at just 10 minutes
Not suited to compliance-grade or broadcast captioning

Best for: Short-form social content (Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts) across a wide language spread, where speed and visual polish matter more than certified accuracy.

Rev logo

Rev

AI tier: 57+ languages (incl. English, French, German, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Hindi); human tier narrower - Rev does not publish one single complete list for the AI tier
Dual AI + human-translation model under one roof
ADA-compliant captions built for legal/accessibility requirements
Established reputation in broadcast, legal and medical captioning
Human tier is expensive ($4-7+/minute) and slower
Editing tools more limited than dedicated subtitle editors
Human-tier language coverage trails the AI tier significantly

Best for: Legal, medical or compliance-driven subtitling work in major languages, where certified human accuracy outweighs speed.

Happy Scribe logo

Happy Scribe

120-150+ languages (same representative subset as in Transcription above)
Same AI + human hybrid strength as in transcription
Broadcast compliance and SOC 2 Type II security
Bundled translation alongside subtitling
Full accuracy still requires the paid human-review tier
Not the cheapest option for a simple one-off job

Best for: Enterprise or broadcast clients needing subtitles in a long tail of languages with consistent quality across all of them.

3. Text to Audio Recording

ElevenLabs (the best so far) logo

ElevenLabs (the best so far)

71 languages; AI dubbing into 29 (incl. Hindi, Arabic, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Swahili, Hausa, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and more)
Industry-leading emotional range and naturalness - widely regarded as the quality benchmark
10,000+ voice library
N.B.: The tool we already use in production for AI-generated voiceover work
Premium pricing relative to competitors
Billing/credit model draws frequent user complaints
Per-character cost adds up fast on long-form content

Best for: Creative, narrative or client-facing voiceover work in major world languages where natural emotional delivery is the priority - exactly the kind of project we've already delivered.

Murf AI logo

Murf AI

35+ languages (incl. English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, Tamil, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Romanian, Turkish, Polish, Bengali, Indonesian - Murf does not publish one single complete list of all 35+)
Strong enterprise compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA-ready)
Lower API latency than ElevenLabs - useful for real-time use
Simpler, more affordable entry point ($19/month)
Smaller voice library (~200) vs ElevenLabs' thousands
Less emotional range on independent benchmarks

Best for: Corporate e-learning, marketing voiceovers and compliance-sensitive sectors where consistency and security matter more than dramatic vocal range.

Resemble AI logo

Resemble AI

149+ languages with accent preservation (specific named list not independently verifiable from publicly available sources at time of writing - flagged for confirmation)
Widest language coverage of the three
Clones a voice from just 20 seconds of audio
Built-in watermarking designed for the EU AI Act's 2026 disclosure deadline
Smaller brand presence and fewer tutorials than ElevenLabs
Voice library far smaller than ElevenLabs' marketplace

Best for: Large-scale multilingual dubbing spanning many languages at once, or any project requiring EU-compliant AI-content watermarking.

Note: ElevenLabs is the tool we already use in production for AI-generated voiceover work - see our 9-page community health script project, recorded across 9 Indian languages.

Security & Confidentiality

Every project is handled under strict confidentiality. We work under NDA on request and never process sensitive client documents through free public AI tools. For regulated industries and government clients, on-premise AI deployment options are available.

Non-disclosure agreements available for all projects
Confidential documents processed through enterprise-grade secure tools only
GDPR-compliant workflows for EU and UK clients
On-premise AI deployment options for healthcare, government and legal clients
No client data used for AI model training
Secure file transfer and project management throughout

Our Quality Standards

Triple-layer QA
Every project reviewed at translation, editing and proofreading stages
Industry Standards
Our quality process aligns with internationally recognised translation standards
Triple-layer TEP
Translation → Editing → Proofreading as per client preference
Back-translation
Required for ICF and patient-reported outcome documents
Native speakers only
All translators translate into their mother tongue
Subject-matter experts
Translators matched to your industry and content type

Ready to See It in Action?

Tell us your language pair and subject. We will tell you exactly which tools and which human specialists we would deploy - and why.