Transcribe a Mandarin dharma talk from the temple hall to a page.
A Mandarin dharma talk recorded at a Singapore temple or retreat usually runs two to three hours, and it comes back as text at about 2 minutes per hour of audio, so a 3-hour talk is ready in roughly 6 minutes. Mandarin is detected on its own, the first 20 minutes are free, and a 180-minute talk uses 180 of the 500 minutes in the $6 pack.
What a recorded talk needs
The teaching in writing, without the hours of listening again.
Chanting is left out
Most talks open with chanting, a bell or a short recitation before the teacher speaks. Music, chanting and recitation are not transcribed; the spoken teaching is, so the page starts where the explanation starts and the timestamps still match the recording.
A retreat on one pack
A three-day retreat with two talks a day of 2.5 hours each comes to 900 minutes. That sits inside the $12 pack of 2,000 minutes with 1,100 minutes to spare for the next retreat. Credits never expire and prices are in US dollars.
The evening stays in one piece
An evening talk with a question session after it can stay as a single recording. A file may run to 10 hours or 5 GB, so there is no reason to cut the teaching from the questions. Send it from upload page or paste the temple's YouTube link.
Fast enough to share the same night
The pace is about 2 minutes of processing per audio hour. A volunteer who uploads a 2.5-hour talk at the end of the evening has the text, chapters and brief about 5 minutes later.
Why talk recordings go unread
Hours of Mandarin teaching, and nobody has time to type them up.
✗ Recording only
Talks pile up on a phone or a channel, and the volunteer who types them out is always months behind. Retreat organisers often hold dozens of these recordings and no budget for a typist. A talk that waits a year to be written up is usually never written up at all.
- A volunteer typing for days per talk
- Chanting mixed into the notes
- No way to find one teaching again
- Services that give up after sixty minutes
- Upload caps smaller than one talk
- A monthly plan for an occasional need
✓ Text the sangha can read
Each talk becomes a Mandarin document with chapters and a clock, ready for editing into a booklet. Volunteers then edit the text rather than type it from scratch, which turns a week of evenings into one careful read. The timestamps let an editor jump to the exact passage whenever a phrase sounds wrong.
- About 6 minutes for a 3-hour talk
- Mandarin found without a setting
- The teaching kept, the chanting left out
- Teacher and questioners named in the summary
- Chapters at each teaching point
- DOCX for the booklet, SRT for the video
Sample
A three-hour Mandarin talk, at four moments.
This sample is illustrative and was written for this page, not taken from any real talk or temple. Lines are shown in Mandarin as they would come back.
Export
One transcript. Five clean formats.
Every pack exports all five — no format is held back for a higher tier.
Plain text
De-ummed paragraphs. Ready to paste.
SRT captions
Timed to the speech. Every video editor reads this.
WebVTT
HTML5 player + YouTube uploads.
Show notes
Formatted with chapters and pull-quotes.
Machine-readable
Timestamped text for your own tools.
Pricing
Honest pricing, no surprises.
A pack from $6 (500 minutes) opens the full transcript. After that, no subscription and no auto-renew — every tier is a one-time minute pack, and credits never expire. Buy once, use the minutes whenever you need them.
Casual pack
$6/500 min
8 hours of audio — $0.72 an hour. One-time — credits never expire.
- 500 minutes of audio
- All export formats
- Unlimited AI chat per transcript
- Executive summary & key quote
Best value
$12/2,000 min
33 hours of audio — $0.36 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 2,000 minutes of audio
- Priority queue
- All export formats
- Unlimited AI chat per transcript
Bulk pack
$24/5,000 min
83 hours of audio — $0.29 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- Priority queue
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Mandarin dharma talks, answered.
How long does a 3-hour Mandarin talk take to transcribe?
Close to 6 minutes; the rate is about 2 minutes of processing per hour of talk. A 2-hour talk takes about 4 minutes, and the page can be closed while it runs.
What does a talk, or a whole retreat, cost?
One 3-hour talk is 180 minutes, so it fits the $6 pack of 500 minutes with 320 left over. A retreat of six 2.5-hour talks is 900 minutes and belongs on the $12 pack of 2,000. A first visit transcribes 20 minutes at no charge, and a longer talk continues from where that preview stopped once a pack is bought.
Are the chanting and the recitation transcribed?
No. Chanting, music, bells and recitation are not transcribed. The teacher's explanation and the questions afterwards are, with timestamps that line up with the original recording.
Is there a size limit for a long talk?
One file may be up to 10 hours or 5 GB, whichever comes first. Uploads cap at 2 GB until the first pack is bought; past that, a video starts as soon as a pack is on the account. A talk on YouTube or a Google Drive share link can be pasted instead of uploaded.
Does it handle Mandarin mixed with English or Pali terms?
Mandarin is among 99 languages detected automatically, and a talk is detected on the language spoken most. English asides inside a Mandarin talk are handled; technical terms are worth one check against the teacher's preferred spelling. A volunteer editor can check names and sutra titles in one pass, which is far quicker than typing the talk from the audio.
What do I get back, and who can hear the talk?
Text exports as TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT or JSON. Talks sent to WhipScribe are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training.
Related
More for teachings and talks
Send this week's talk. Twenty minutes of the talk cost nothing.
Transcribe a talkOperated by Neugence Technology Pvt. Ltd. · contact@whipscribe.com · Security · Privacy · Terms