How to translate Windows Live Captions
Live Captions in Windows 11 turns the audio you hear on your PC into captions. But the captions stay in the language being spoken: Japanese audio gives you Japanese captions.
Built-in translation is limited
Live Captions can only translate on Copilot+ PCs running Windows 11, version 24H2 or later, and only into English or Simplified Chinese (Microsoft's explanation, checked on October 31, 2026).
Translate with Overlator
Overlator is an overlay translator for Windows. It reads the text Live Captions produces, translates it, and shows it at the very front of your screen. You don't need a Copilot+ PC: it works on Windows 11, version 22H2 or later, with the latest updates. It hasn't been tested on Windows on ARM.
Overlator isn't available yet. These are the steps for after launch.
- Install and launch Overlator, then follow the setup steps. The Live Captions window opens along the way. The first time, choose "Yes, continue".
- In that window, use the gear button → "Change language" to pick the language the other person speaks. A new language needs a download the first time.
- Use the gear button → "Position" and choose "Overlaid on screen".
- On Overlator's Home page, choose "Other person's language" and "Your language".
- Play the audio. The Live Captions window hides, and only the translated captions appear at the front of your screen.
Good to know
- It can hear the languages Live Captions supports: English, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Danish and Japanese.
- Turning audio into captions happens on your PC, and the audio isn't sent anywhere. To translate, the caption text is sent to the translation service (Anthropic's Claude).
- All sound you can hear on your PC gets captioned. The other person's voice needs to be coming through your PC's speakers or headphones.
- Translations can be wrong. Always double-check anything important.