Live translated subtitles for game and voice-chat audio
Understand mode listens to what you hear, in VRChat, in a Discord call or in a game lobby, and shows it in your language while people are still talking.
5 free minutes to start. For Windows.
Live captions
Captions for the voices you hear
Subtitles usually come from the game or the video. Voice chat has none. Understand adds them on your side, so nobody else has to do anything.
Read it as they speak
Each line appears with the original underneath, so you can see what was said and how it was translated.
Or hear it
One tap switches between subtitles only and subtitles plus a spoken translation in your headphones.
On top, out of the way
The panel stays above the game and lets clicks through. Hover it or press Ctrl+Shift+Space to use it.
Examples
They say, They say, in Spanish ¿Alguien quiere jugar otra partida?
You read, You read, in English Does anyone want to play another round?
They say, They say, in Chinese 你的麦克风声音有点小。
You read, You read, in English Your microphone is a little quiet.
How it listens
Understand needs to hear the game, and only the game. The cleanest way is to give the game its own audio line and let TalkFerry pass it on to your headphones.
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Best: a room line
Send the game’s or the call’s audio output to a second virtual cable, or to an output you do not listen on, and pick it as the room line in Settings. TalkFerry plays that audio in your headphones and translates it.
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Simplest: your speakers
With no room line, Understand listens to what your PC plays and pauses while it is speaking a translation itself.
What live subtitles cannot do
- They cannot say who is speaking. A room or a call arrives as one mixed audio stream.
- Several people talking at once, loud music and background noise reduce accuracy. One voice at a time works well.
- They run a moment behind the speaker, like a human interpreter would.
- Understand uses minutes faster than Translate, because it processes everything it hears rather than only your own sentences. How minutes are counted
- The panel is a desktop window. In a VR headset you need a desktop-view tool to see it.
- The people you hear are processed too. Let them know you are using a translator. Privacy policy
Subtitle questions
Does it work on Quest or inside a VR headset?
TalkFerry runs on a Windows PC, so it works when you play VRChat on PC, in desktop mode or with a PC-connected headset. People hear your translated voice and see your chatbox subtitles either way. The TalkFerry panel itself is a desktop window, not a SteamVR overlay, so you will not see it inside the headset without a desktop-view tool. There is no app for standalone Quest.
Is the translation a voice or captions?
Both, in different directions. What you say goes out as a spoken voice (and as chatbox text in VRChat). What other people say comes to you as live captions in the TalkFerry panel, and you can also have it read out in your headphones.
Can it tell who is speaking?
No. Understand mode hears the game or call as one mixed audio stream, so captions are not labeled by speaker. It works best when one person talks at a time; several people talking over each other, loud music and background noise reduce accuracy.
What counts as a minute?
The time the translator spends processing speech, including about two seconds after each sentence while it finishes. Silence is not counted. In our own testing, an hour of lively conversation used roughly 19 minutes. Understand mode uses minutes faster because it processes everything it hears.
Is what I say private?
Audio is streamed through our server to Google Gemini, which does the translation. We do not record or store your audio or the transcripts. While TalkFerry runs on Gemini’s unpaid tier, Google may use what is said to improve its products and human reviewers may read or listen to it, so do not use TalkFerry for anything confidential. The privacy policy has the details.
Related guides
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How to get live captions for VRChat and Discord voice chat
How to get live captions or translated subtitles for other people's voices in VRChat and Discord, starting with Windows 11 live captions, and what no tool can do.
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How do voice translators work, and do they really work?
How voice translators turn speech in one language into speech in another, where the delay comes from, why they make mistakes and how to get better results.
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How to translate a Discord voice call in real time
Discord has no voice translator of its own that we could find. Compare voice bots, caption apps and virtual-microphone translators, with setup steps.
Follow the conversation, not just the tone of voice
Turn on Understand in the next room or call you join. Your first 5 minutes are free.