How well does it handle Somali?
Supported end-to-end; treat the output as a fast first draft and plan a review pass — it still beats typing from scratch.
Latin-script output in standard Somali orthography.
Diaspora recordings with English or Arabic mixing are common and handled; review mixed passages.
What you get
Speaker labels
Every voice in the recording is separated and labelled — works in Somali the same as in English, because diarization listens to voices, not words.
Word-level timestamps
Each word is timed to the audio, which is what makes accurate Somali SRT and VTT subtitle files possible.
Search & quote
The transcript is searchable in Somali — jump to the exact second something was said and copy it with its timestamp.
Every export
TXT, SRT, VTT, DOCX and JSON on every pack — no format paywall.
Who transcribes Somali audio here
Interviews, radio archives, community meetings and oral history.
Questions people ask
Do I need to tell it the audio is Somali?
No — the language is detected from the first seconds of audio automatically. If a recording mixes Somali and English, each part is transcribed in the language actually spoken.
Can I get English text from Somali audio?
Yes. Alongside transcription in Somali, the engine can translate the speech to English text in the same pass — useful for subtitling Somali content for an international audience.
Does it work on Somali video, not just audio?
Yes — upload MP4/MOV/WebM or paste a link; the audio track is extracted automatically and transcribed the same way.
How much does it cost?
The preview is instant with no signup. Credits are one-time purchases that never expire: $4 for 300 minutes, $12 for 2,000 minutes (about 36¢ per hour of audio).
Is this live captioning?
No — Whipscribe transcribes recordings, not live speech. Upload a file that already exists and the Somali transcript is typically ready in about a minute per half hour of audio.
Related: Audio to text · Subtitle generator · Interview transcription · Bulk transcription