> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vowen.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Languages reference
> Interface, dictation and summary languages, with the full list for each.
Vowen has three independent language settings. Changing one never changes the others. You can
run the interface in Japanese, dictate in English, and have your meeting summaries written in
French.
| Setting | Controls | Where |
| ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ |
| Interface language | Vowen's own buttons, menus, labels and notifications | Settings > Language > **UI Language** |
| Dictation language | What the speech model expects to hear | Settings > Language > **Dictation Language** |
| Summary language | What AI note summaries are written in | Settings > Language > **Notes Summary Language** |
## Interface language
Eighteen locales. Each is listed in the picker under its own name, never an English label.
| Language | Shown as | Code | Date format |
| --------------------- | ---------- | ------- | ----------- |
| English | English | `en` | `en-US` |
| Bulgarian | Български | `bg` | `bg-BG` |
| Czech | Čeština | `cs` | `cs-CZ` |
| German | Deutsch | `de` | `de-DE` |
| Spanish | Español | `es` | `es-ES` |
| French | Français | `fr` | `fr-FR` |
| Italian | Italiano | `it` | `it-IT` |
| Japanese | 日本語 | `ja` | `ja-JP` |
| Korean | 한국어 | `ko` | `ko-KR` |
| Polish | Polski | `pl` | `pl-PL` |
| Portuguese | Português | `pt` | `pt-BR` |
| Russian | Русский | `ru` | `ru-RU` |
| Swedish | Svenska | `sv` | `sv-SE` |
| Turkish | Türkçe | `tr` | `tr-TR` |
| Ukrainian | Українська | `uk` | `uk-UA` |
| Vietnamese | Tiếng Việt | `vi` | `vi-VN` |
| Chinese (Simplified) | 简体中文 | `zh` | `zh-CN` |
| Chinese (Traditional) | 繁體中文 | `zh-TW` | `zh-TW` |
The default is English. The change applies immediately with no restart; the application menu
and the tray menu are rebuilt at the same time. Dates and times throughout the app follow the
BCP 47 tag in the last column.
The interface language can also be picked during onboarding, from the button in the top right
of the onboarding window, and it is one of the preferences Cloud Sync carries between devices.
Translations are per language file, and the main app window has **no per-string fallback to
English**. A string that has not been translated yet renders as its raw internal key, for
example `command_palette.placeholder`. Menus, dialogs and notifications produced outside the
main window do fall back to English.
## Dictation language
The default is **Auto-detect**. What the picker offers changes with the speech model you have
selected, because different models support different languages. If you switch to a model that
cannot handle your saved language, Vowen resets you to Auto-detect rather than sending a
language the model cannot transcribe.
### Which models support what
| Model | Auto-detect | Selectable languages | Picker |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------- | ------------------------ | ---------- |
| Whisper multilingual (Tiny, Base, Small, Medium, Large v3, Large v3 Turbo) | Yes | **99** | Open |
| Whisper English-only (`tiny.en`, `base.en`, `small.en`, `medium.en`) | No | English only | **Locked** |
| Parakeet V3 | Yes, 25 European languages | None (the model decides) | **Locked** |
| Parakeet V2 | No | English only | **Locked** |
| Parakeet Japanese | No | Japanese only | **Locked** |
| Parakeet Mandarin | No | Mandarin Chinese only | **Locked** |
| Nemotron EN | No | English only | **Locked** |
| Nemotron Multilingual | Yes | 31 | Open |
| Nova 2 (Deepgram) | Yes | 33 | Open |
| Nova 3 (Deepgram) | Yes | 50 | Open |
| Universal-3.5 Pro (AssemblyAI) | Yes | 18 | Open |
| Voxtral Mini (Mistral) | Yes | 13 | Open |
| Real-Time STT (Soniox) | Yes | 60 | Open |
| Saaras v3 (Sarvam AI) | Yes | 23 | Open |
| Aurora (xAI) | Yes | 25 | Open |
| Speechmatics | **No** | 39 | Open |
| Ink 2 (Cartesia) | No | English only | **Locked** |
| Whisper Large v3 and Large v3 Turbo (Groq) | Yes | 99 | Open |
| Scribe v2 (ElevenLabs) | Yes | 99 | Open |
| OpenAI (gpt-transcribe) | Yes | 99 | Open |
| Google Gemini (Live + Flash) | Yes | 99 | Open |
| Custom speech servers | Yes | 99 | Open |
Four families lock the selector outright: the English-only Whisper builds, all four Parakeet
variants, Nemotron EN, and Ink 2. With those the picker greys out and explains why, and the
settings row shows the language the model actually uses rather than whatever you had stored.
Any cloud model without its own entry above falls through to the full 99-language Whisper
catalog.
### The lists
Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Assamese, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Basque,
Belarusian, Bengali, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian,
Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian,
German, Greek, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian,
Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Korean, Lao,
Latin, Latvian, Lingala, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam,
Maltese, Maori, Marathi, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian, Norwegian Nynorsk, Occitan, Pashto,
Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Shona, Sindhi,
Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tajik,
Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese,
Welsh, Yiddish, Yoruba.
Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German,
Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian,
Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian.
There is no language to pick. Parakeet V3 detects and transcribes across all 25 on its own,
which is why the selector is locked to Auto-detect.
Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish,
French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian,
Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish,
Turkish, Ukrainian.
The list is the set of codes with an entry in the model's own prompt dictionary. Anything
outside it silently falls back to the default prompt and decodes noticeably worse, which is
why the picker will not offer it.
Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French,
German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian,
Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish,
Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.
Arabic, Belarusian, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish,
Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi,
Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian,
Malay, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak,
Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu,
Vietnamese.
Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian,
Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese.
These are the languages Universal-3.5 Pro supports natively for streaming. File
transcription falls back to Universal-2 for anything else.
Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean,
Portuguese, Russian, Spanish.
Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian,
Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French,
Galician, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese,
Kannada, Kazakh, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi,
Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak,
Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian,
Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh.
English, plus 22 Indian languages: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi,
Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi,
Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu.
Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian,
Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Malay, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian,
Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese.
Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish,
French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese,
Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian,
Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.
Speechmatics is the only model with an open picker and no Auto-detect option. You must
choose a language.
### Overriding it
Dictation language can be overridden in two narrower places, both of which otherwise inherit
the global setting:
* **Per tone**: a tone can pin its own speech model and dictation language.
* **Notes recording defaults**: meetings can use a different language from dictation.
### Auto-translate to English
A Pro toggle in **Settings > Language**, hidden whenever the effective dictation language is
already English. How it works depends on the engine:
| Engine | Method |
| ----------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| Local Whisper | Whisper's own translation, through the `--translate` flag |
| Any cloud model | Post-transcription pass through Google Translate |
| Parakeet (all variants) | Post-transcription pass through Google Translate |
The Google Translate pass sends your transcribed text to Google. It runs after transcription
and adds a short delay, which the settings row warns about for cloud models.
Nemotron matches neither branch, so the toggle has no effect on Nemotron models.
## Summary language
The language your AI meeting-note summaries are written in, regardless of the language the
meeting was held in. The default is **Auto-detect**, which means the summary matches the
language of the transcript.
Because it is not tied to a speech model, this picker always offers the full catalog: the
union of every per-model list, **108 languages**, sorted alphabetically by English name.
### Resolution order
Every summary template can pin a language in the template editor, including the built-in
Meeting Notes template.
Used when the template has no override.
Used when neither is set. The prompt tells the model to detect the primary language of the
transcript and write everything (headings, section titles and body) in that language,
and explicitly not to default to English.
When a language is pinned, the prompt instead instructs the model to write its entire output,
including the title and every heading, in that language regardless of what was spoken.
If a custom template is present but your plan does not include custom templates, the template
is ignored entirely, and so is its language override. The summary falls back to your global
setting.
## American and British spelling
**Settings > Language > English Spelling** picks the spelling convention for English output.
The default is **American English**. The row is only shown when your dictation language is
English or Auto-detect, or when the model is one of the English-locked ones.
Choosing **British English** runs the finished text through a static word-level dictionary of
**1,692** American-to-British mappings. It applies only when the transcription language is
`en` or `auto`.
| Property | Behavior |
| --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Matching | Word boundaries only, case-insensitive |
| Case | Preserved. Lower stays lower, Title stays Title, UPPER stays UPPER |
| Direction | One way, American to British. There is no British-to-American pass |
The dictionary is deliberately pruned relative to the upstream package it came from. A mapping
is removed whenever the American form is itself accepted modern British English, because a
context-blind converter must never introduce errors. Removed classes include:
* Archaic British variants: `instal`, `connexion`, `inflexion`
* Cases where British medical style prefers the American form: `fetus`, `fetal`, `fetid`
* Forms that are not valid in any English: `licenced`, `licencing`
* Homograph traps where the American form is standard British in a common sense:
`practice` and `practices` as nouns, `draft`, `program`, `disk`, `tire`
## Related
Every row in Settings > Language and its default.
Longer explanation of the UI language and how to change it.
Which model to pick, and what each one costs.
Auto-translate is one of the Pro features.