Supported Languages
Vowen supports 99 languages via Whisper models and 25 European languages via Parakeet.Setting Your Language
Go to Settings > Language and select your language from the dropdown.Auto-Detect vs Fixed Language
| Mode | When to Use |
|---|---|
| Auto-detect | You speak multiple languages and want Vowen to figure it out |
| Fixed language | You primarily speak one language (more accurate) |
Pro tip: Switching languages mid-sentence? Set your language to Auto-detect and pair it with Soniox, which handles real-time multilingual transcription (English to Hindi, Spanish to English, and so on) better than anything else we’ve tested. Soniox is a paid streaming model, but on our two-person team, $5 of credit has lasted more than six months of daily use.
Translate to English
Translate to English is a Pro feature.
Language-Specific Recommendations
| Language | Recommended Model | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| English | Base.en or Parakeet | .en models optimized for English |
| Spanish | Multilingual Small or Groq | Works well with local models |
| French | Large v3 Turbo or Groq | Good accuracy with larger models |
| German | Parakeet or Large v3 | Parakeet supports German natively |
| Swedish | Large v3 Turbo or Groq Large v3 | Smaller models struggle with Swedish |
| Romanian | Groq Whisper Large v3 | Cloud recommended for best results |
| Indian languages | Sarvam AI Saaras v3 | Specialized for Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, etc. |
| Japanese/Chinese | Large v3 or Groq | Needs larger models for accuracy |
| Arabic/Hebrew | Large v3 or cloud models | RTL languages supported |
Parakeet Language Support
Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 supports these 25 languages with auto-detection: 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.Tips for Non-English Transcription
- Use a multilingual model — avoid
.enmodels which are English-only - Set language explicitly — don’t rely on auto-detect for non-English
- Try cloud models — Groq Whisper Large v3 often gives better non-English results than local models
- Add vocabulary — Add names and technical terms specific to your language in Settings > Dictionary