If you like how Otter works but your meetings happen in Hindi, or in the Hindi and English mix most Indian teams actually speak, you have probably searched for a note taker like Otter for Hindi and Hinglish. The short answer to the first question everyone asks, "does Otter support Hindi?", is no, not today. This guide explains exactly what Otter supports, what happens when you run a Hinglish meeting through it anyway, and what to check before you trust any other tool with the meetings where your team's real decisions get made.
Does Otter support Hindi?
Otter's own help centre lists the languages it can transcribe: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese (Simplified). Hindi is not on the list, and the page says more languages may come in the future. You can read it on Otter's supported languages page.
Two details on that page are easy to misread:
- Indian accents are supported, Hindi is not. Otter says it handles a wide range of English accents, including Indian ones. That helps if your meetings are entirely in English. It does nothing for a sentence spoken in Hindi.
- Translation is not transcription. Otter Chat can translate a finished conversation into other languages. That works on an English transcript. It cannot recover Hindi words that were never transcribed correctly in the first place.
So for an all-English call with Indian speakers, Otter is a reasonable choice. For anything with Hindi in it, you need something else.
What happens to a Hinglish meeting in an English-only note taker
Hinglish is not two languages taking turns. It is both at once: "client ne bola ki pricing next week tak finalise karni hai, toh Priya, can you send the deck by Monday?" A note taker that only knows English hears the English words clearly and tries to force the Hindi ones into English words that sound similar. The usual results:
- Nonsense phrases where the Hindi parts were, which look like typos but are really guesses.
- Missing half sentences, because the tool treats Hindi speech as noise and skips it.
- Wrong meaning in the summary. If the decision was said in Hindi and only the follow-up was in English, the summary keeps the follow-up and loses the decision.
The last one is the expensive one. A transcript with gaps is annoying. Minutes that confidently state the wrong outcome get acted on. We go deeper into why mixed speech is hard for speech recognition in our guide on how to record Hinglish meetings and get notes in English.
What to look for in a note taker for Hindi and Hinglish
Plenty of tools now list "Hindi" somewhere on their website. That is not the same as handling a real Indian meeting. Check these five things before you commit:
Hindi and Hinglish note taker checklist
- Mixed speech, not just Hindi. Does it handle Hindi and English inside the same sentence, or does it expect you to pick one language and stick to it?
- Script you can read. Is the transcript in Roman script (the way most people type Hinglish on WhatsApp) or Devanagari? Pick the one your readers use.
- Minutes in English. Does it write the decisions and action items in plain English, so a client or a colleague in another city can read them?
- Every point traceable. Can you click a decision and hear the moment it was said, to check a translation you are unsure of?
- Works where you meet. Zoom, Google Meet and Teams, and also the in-person meetings around a table, where a lot of Hindi conversation happens.
Our guide to Hindi meeting transcription covers the Roman versus Devanagari choice in more detail.
Otter compared with a note taker built for Hinglish
| What to check | Otter | What a Hinglish note taker should do |
|---|---|---|
| Hindi transcription | Not supported | Transcribes Hindi speech accurately |
| Hinglish in one sentence | Hindi parts are lost or guessed as English | Keeps both languages in the same sentence |
| Indian English accents | Supported | Supported |
| Minutes language | English, from the English parts it understood | English, from the whole meeting |
| Recording without a bot | Possible through its desktop app | Records from your own computer, no bot in the call |
| In-person meetings | Not a live feature | Records a meeting around a table like any call |
For a wider comparison that covers more than language, see our Otter alternative guide for Indian teams.
How to test any tool on one of your own meetings
A feature list will not tell you how a tool copes with your team's accent, your product names and the way your manager switches languages mid-thought. One real meeting will. Here is a quick test that takes about twenty minutes:
- Pick a typical meeting, ideally one with at least two speakers and a fair amount of Hindi, such as a weekly review or a sales call.
- Record it with the tool you are testing, after telling everyone it is being recorded. Our guide on whether it is legal to record meetings in India covers consent.
- Read three moments closely: one decision, one task with a deadline, and one sentence that switched languages. Did the tool get the words and the meaning right?
- Check names and numbers. Client names, amounts and dates are where errors cost the most.
- Ask a colleague who was not there to read the minutes and tell you what was decided. If they get it right, the tool works for you.
Doing it with Zrec
Zrec is an AI meeting note taker built for the meetings Indian teams actually have. Choose Hindi or Hinglish for a meeting and it transcribes the conversation in Roman script, Hindi and English mixed as it was spoken, using a speech model trained on Hinglish. The minutes come out in clear English: a summary, decisions, and action items with owners and due dates, each linked to the moment in the recording it came from, so you can check any line in seconds. It records from your own computer, with no bot joining the call, and works for Zoom, Google Meet, Teams and in-person meetings. All-English meetings work the same way. You can see how it works on the Zrec home page.
Frequently asked questions
Can Otter transcribe Hindi?
No. Otter's help centre lists English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese (Simplified) as its transcription languages. It handles Indian accents when people speak English.
Can I use Otter and translate the transcript into Hindi?
Otter Chat can translate a transcript, but only what was transcribed. If the meeting was in Hindi or Hinglish, the Hindi parts are already lost before translation starts.
Should Hinglish minutes be written in Hindi or English?
English, for most teams. Minutes are read by people who were not in the room, including clients and colleagues in other cities, and plain English reaches all of them. Keep the transcript in Hinglish so nothing is lost, and write the minutes in English. Our minutes of meeting format shows the layout.
How do I choose between Hinglish note takers?
Run the same real meeting through each one and compare the minutes side by side, using the five step test above. Pay most attention to the sentences that switched languages, and to names and numbers.
Otter is a good note taker for English meetings. If your meetings switch between Hindi and English, test any tool on one real meeting before you trust it with your minutes.