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Dictate in 25 new languages across Microsoft 365

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Hey, Officer Insiders! My name is Hadley Griffin, and I’m a Product Manager on the Natural User Experiences team. I’m excited to share that we are bringing 25 new languages to the Office Dictation experience!

Dictate in 25 new languages

The Dictate feature enables you to save time and stay in the flow by using speech-to-text to quickly get your thoughts into your document. Support for additional languages is one of the most common requests we receive from Microsoft 365 users. We’ve heard you! The Dictate feature in Office is now available in the following 25 new languages:

  • Arabic (Bahrain), ar-BH
  • Arabic (Egypt), ar-EG
  • Arabic (Saudi Arabia), ar-SA
  • Bulgarian, bg-BG
  • Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong), zh-HK
  • Croatian, hr-HR
  • Czech, cs-CZ
  • English (New Zealand), en-NZ
  • Estonian, et-EE
  • Greek, el-GR
  • Gujarati (India), gu-IN
  • Hebrew, he-IL
  • Hungarian, hu-HU
  • Irish, ga-IE
  • Latvian, lv-LV
  • Lithuanian, lt-LT
  • Maltese, mt-MT
  • Marathi (India), mr-IN
  • Romanian, ro-RO
  • Slovak, sk-SK
  • Slovenian, sl-SI
  • Tamil (India), ta –IN
  • Telugu (India), te- IN
  • Turkish, tr-TR
  • Vietnamese, vi-VN

How it works

The Dictate button appears on the Home tab when you open selected Office apps. (Desktop Dictation is currently available in the following apps: Word for Windows, Mac, and the web; Outlook for Windows and Mac; PowerPoint for Windows and the web; and currently rolling out on OneNote for Windows and the web.)

To use any of the 25 new languages:

  1. On the Home tab, click the Dictate button to launch the Dictation experience.
  2. On the Dictation toolbar, click the Dictation Settings (gear icon), click Spoken language, and then select the language you want to use. Screenshot of the Dictate feature in Office showing new language options.

Known issues

Please note that the newly supported languages are considered “Preview Languages” and may have lower accuracy and/or limited punctuation support.

Scenarios to try

Here are a few reasons why you might want to try one of these 25 new languages in Office Dictation:

  • You speak a second language but aren’t confident writing in that language. Let’s say that you speak Korean with your parents but struggle to write in that language. When emailing your parents, you can use Dictation to focus on the ideas and information you want to share and not worry about using incorrect characters or grammar. 
  • You speak a second language but do not have the correct keyboard. With Dictation, you don’t have to worry about typing each character correctly. Instead, you can focus on what matters—your words!
  • One of the new languages is your native language, and you haven’t yet tried Dictation in your native tongue. The Dictate feature is a great way to lighten your cognitive load and capture your thoughts quickly and easily.

Profanity filter

By default, Dictation masks some words that could be considered profane with “****”. This is to ensure that any errors in speech recognition don’t incorrectly attribute potentially offensive phrases to a speaker. You can disable this feature by clicking the Dictation Settings button on the Dictation toolbar, and then clicking Filter sensitive phrases to uncheck the setting.

Tips and tricks

  • If multiple locales or countries are available for a language, be sure to choose the option that best represents your accent. 
  • Click the Help button on the Dictation toolbar to view a list of supported punctuation marks for your language.
  • If you would prefer to not speak the punctuation marks, click the Dictation Settings button on the Dictation toolbar, and then click Enable auto-punctuation.

Requirements

To use Dictation, you must have:

  • A stable internet connection
  • A working microphone (enable microphone permissions if prompted)

Privacy

This feature analyzes your data with intelligent services. You can access the Microsoft Privacy Statement for additional details on data security.

Availability

We will be rolling out Dictation in 25 new languages to all web users and to Office Insiders running the following builds:

  • Windows Version Version 2012 (Build 13616.10000) or later
  • Mac Version 16.32 (Build 19120802) or later

Don’t have it yet? It’s probably us, not you.

Features are released over some time to ensure things are working smoothly. We highlight features that you may not have because they’re slowly releasing to larger numbers of Insiders. Sometimes we remove elements to further improve them based on your feedback. Though this is rare, we also reserve the option to pull a feature entirely out of the product, even if you, as an Insider, have had the opportunity to try it.

Feedback

We want to hear from you! Please click Help > Feedback to submit your thoughts about this feature.

Learn what other information you should include in your feedback to ensure it’s actionable and reaches the right people. We’re excited to hear from you!

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