How to get a Google Meet transcript in Chinese (Mandarin)

What Meet does offer in Chinese (Mandarin)

Live captions. Meet shows captions in Chinese (Mandarin) to all users (Google lists Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Mandarin, Traditional)) (Google Meet Help: live captions). They appear under the video while the call runs, and you can scroll back while you are in the meeting. When the call ends they are gone: captions are not a transcript file.

Translated captions. On Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus and Google AI Pro for Education, Meet can translate captions to and from Chinese (Mandarin); Google says the feature is still rolling out (Google Meet Help: translated captions). They are live too, and nothing is saved.

What people try instead

• Starting the transcript anyway. The transcript works in its eight languages only, and Chinese (Mandarin) is not among them. There is no Chinese (Mandarin) option to pick.
• Copying captions by hand. Someone keeps the captions open and copies them into a document. It breaks the moment that person has to speak, and the text has no names or times you can trust.
• Uploading a recording to a transcription service. This works only if the call was recorded and the organizer shares the file. It adds a step after every meeting, and everyone on the call has to agree to being recorded.
• One person takes notes. Fine for a short call. In a long one the note taker stops taking part, and the notes say what they understood, not what was said.

Who needs this

Teams in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore meet with partners who use Google Workspace. The call is in Mandarin, and the person who reports to a partner abroad needs English minutes, while a colleague in Taipei reads traditional characters.

How Trippi Notes writes a Chinese (Mandarin) transcript

1. 1Open the call in Chrome. Join the Google Meet call in Chrome on your computer, as usual.
2. 2Click the Trippi Notes icon. Click the icon in the Chrome toolbar once the call starts. Chrome lets the extension hear the tab only after that click.
3. 3Set Chinese (Mandarin) as the language you hear. Choose 中文 on the language bar. It is a hint, not a lock: if someone switches to English, that is written down too.
4. 4Turn on translation if you want it. Tick translation and pick the language you read best. Each line then gets a second line in that language.
5. 5Read the notes after the call. The transcript with names and times, a summary, tasks with owners and a follow-up draft are in your journal.

The transcript is written in Chinese (Mandarin), as it was said, with the speaker’s name and the time on every line. The summary is written in the language you read: the one you translate into, or your browser’s language if translation is off. No bot joins the call and no participant is added. Still, tell people you are taking notes. It is good manners, and in some places it is the law: AI note taker consent.

What a line looks like

Li Wei, 16:30
我们周五之前把新的报价发给您。We will send you the new quote before Friday.

The Chinese (Mandarin) line is what was said; the line under it is the translation, shown when translation into English is on. After the call, a line like this becomes a decision or a task with an owner in the summary, and Ask AI answers questions about the call with quotes that jump back to the moment.

Notes on Chinese (Mandarin)

• Simplified or traditional. For the translation line, simplified Chinese (简体中文) and traditional Chinese (繁體中文) are separate choices, so each reader gets the script they use.
• Cantonese is not covered. Meet’s live captions list Chinese (Cantonese), but Trippi Notes does not offer Cantonese as a speech language. This page is about Mandarin.

Chinese (Mandarin) on the other platforms

Zoom does: Chinese (Mandarin) is one of the 19 languages of its cloud-recording transcript, on the host’s account. Teams does: Chinese (Mandarin) is on its list of spoken languages, if the organizer’s policy allows transcription. The whole picture is in the language table.