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Choose your languages
Every Listening and Speaking session has two languages: the one being spoken and the one you want to read and hear it in. Subtitles work a little differently — they detect the spoken language by themselves and translate into one or more languages you pick.
Input language and output language
- Input language is what the audio is spoken in: the video or podcast in a Listening session, or you in a Speaking session. The default is Auto-detect.
- Output language is the language of the translation, the vocabulary glosses, the grammar notes and the spoken translation. The default is English.
If your show is in Japanese and you are an English speaker, that is Input: Japanese (or Auto-detect), Output: English.
Set your defaults
Each session kind keeps its own defaults, so a change for Listening never leaks into Speaking.
- Open the Dashboard’s Settings: click the gear in the overlay, or choose Settings… from the menu-bar icon.
- On the Session tab, choose Listening or Speaking at the top.
- Under Languages, set Input language and Output language. Pick from the list, or type any language name in English.
Session changes apply the next time you start a session.
Change languages for one session
Sometimes tonight’s film is in a different language than usual. Press the options button next to Start Listening or Start Speaking in the overlay and choose an Input language and Output language there. The choice is “for this session only — Settings keeps your defaults”:
- it stays in place if you stop and start again,
- it resets when you quit and reopen the app, or when you press Reset to defaults,
- and the languages you actually used are recorded with the saved session.
Which languages are supported
The pickers list the 20 most widely used languages, to keep them short:
- English
- SpanishEspañol
- FrenchFrançais
- GermanDeutsch
- ItalianItaliano
- PortuguesePortuguês
- Japanese日本語
- Korean한국어
- Chinese中文
- Hindiहिंदी
- Arabicالعربية
- RussianРусский
- DutchNederlands
- TurkishTürkçe
- PolishPolski
- VietnameseTiếng Việt
- IndonesianBahasa Indonesia
- Thaiไทย
- SwedishSvenska
- UkrainianУкраїнська
You are not limited to those. Choose Other… in the overlay (or just type in Settings) and enter a language by its English name — “Swahili”, “Welsh”, “Tamil”. These 57 languages are the ones the speech models behind RainbowSay document support for:
- Afrikaans
- Arabicالعربية
- ArmenianՀայերեն
- AzerbaijaniAzərbaycan dili
- BelarusianБеларуская
- BosnianBosanski
- BulgarianБългарски
- CatalanCatalà
- Chinese中文
- CroatianHrvatski
- CzechČeština
- DanishDansk
- DutchNederlands
- English
- EstonianEesti
- FinnishSuomi
- FrenchFrançais
- GalicianGalego
- GermanDeutsch
- GreekΕλληνικά
- Hebrewעברית
- Hindiहिंदी
- HungarianMagyar
- IcelandicÍslenska
- IndonesianBahasa Indonesia
- ItalianItaliano
- Japanese日本語
- Kannadaಕನ್ನಡ
- KazakhҚазақ тілі
- Korean한국어
- LatvianLatviešu
- LithuanianLietuvių
- MacedonianМакедонски
- MalayBahasa Melayu
- MaoriMāori
- Marathiमराठी
- Nepaliनेपाली
- NorwegianNorsk
- Persianفارسی
- PolishPolski
- PortuguesePortuguês
- RomanianRomână
- RussianРусский
- SerbianСрпски
- SlovakSlovenčina
- SlovenianSlovenščina
- SpanishEspañol
- SwahiliKiswahili
- SwedishSvenska
- Tagalog
- Tamilதமிழ்
- Thaiไทย
- TurkishTürkçe
- UkrainianУкраїнська
- Urduاردو
- VietnameseTiếng Việt
- WelshCymraeg
You can type a language that isn’t listed, too; it is passed along as written, but results will vary.
Languages for live Subtitles
Subtitles detect the spoken language automatically — there is nothing to set on the input side, and the original line in the caption window is simply labeled “Original”. On the output side, Subtitles translate into these 13 languages:
- English
- SpanishEspañol
- PortuguesePortuguês
- FrenchFrançais
- Japanese日本語
- RussianРусский
- Chinese中文
- GermanDeutsch
- Korean한국어
- Hindiहिंदी
- IndonesianBahasa Indonesia
- VietnameseTiếng Việt
- ItalianItaliano
You can show more than one translation at a time; how many depends on your plan — see Pricing. Set your usual ones under Settings then Session then Subtitles then Languages then Subtitle languages, and add or remove languages for a single session right in the overlay. More in Subtitles in several languages.
The app’s own language
The menus and windows of RainbowSay follow your macOS language and are available in ten languages. To override it, open Settings then App then App language; the change applies immediately. This is separate from your translation languages — a Japanese speaker practicing German can still run the app in English.