French transcription
French speech to text, with the spelling that French actually requires. Upload a recording and Hilite returns a French transcript that handles liaison, elision, and the accents, rather than a phonetic approximation. Metropolitan and Quebec French both work.
Upload a file and download the transcript.
How to transcribe French audio to text
- 1
Upload the French audio
MP3, M4A, WAV, or an MP4 video file. Interviews, lectures, and full episodes are all fine.
- 2
Set the language to French
Naming the language gives a cleaner result than letting the engine guess, particularly for recordings with proper nouns in other languages.
- 3
Check the liaisons and the names
Spoken French runs words together, so word boundaries and homophones are where a transcript slips. Click any line to hear it and fix it in place.
- 4
Export the transcript
Download as text, Word, or an SRT subtitle file, or carry on in Hilite to edit the recording from the transcript.
Keep working inside the Hilite editor
Your uploaded files open directly in a focused editor view. Arrange your clips, preview the timeline, adjust transitions, and export when the track sounds perfectly right.
- Review the transcript in context
- Keep timestamps with the words
- Copy, export, or keep editing
Input formats
Output formats
Built for every kind of audio
Whatever you are making, this tool helps you get to a cleaner, more useful result, then hand off to Hilite to enhance and polish.
- French, not transliterated FrenchThe transcript comes back in French with the accents and the cedilla intact, and with elisions written as French writes them rather than spelled out.
- Liaison is the hard partFrench joins words in speech that are separate in writing, which is exactly where machine transcripts lose the boundary. Every line stays linked to the audio so you can settle it by ear.
- Metropolitan and Quebec FrenchBoth are supported. Accuracy depends far more on recording quality than on which side of the Atlantic the speaker is from.
Made for podcasters and their teams
Trim the dead air off the top and tail, and every recording is ready to edit, enhance, and publish.
FAQ
Common questions
If you do not see your question here, the support team replies within one business day.
- Yes, it is free to start. Longer files, saved projects, and some export formats may need a free Hilite account.
- No. This transcribes French audio into French text. If you need it in English, transcribe here and translate the text afterwards.
- Yes, along with metropolitan French, Belgian and Swiss French, and African varieties. Recording quality matters more than accent.
- Yes. Acute, grave, and circumflex accents, the trema, and the cedilla are all written out properly.
- Plain text, Word, and SRT subtitle files, with timestamps and speaker labels where the recording supports them.
Turn French audio into French text
Upload the recording, read the transcript, and carry on in Hilite when it needs editing or publishing.