If you’ve ever been in a Microsoft Teams meeting where someone is speaking a different language, you know how frustrating it can be trying to follow along. The good news is that Teams has built-in translation features that can help — and they’re easier to set up than you might think.
In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through all the ways you can turn on translation in a Microsoft Teams meeting. Whether you want translated captions on your screen, a real-time AI interpreter, or human language interpretation, there’s an option for every situation.
Let’s get into it.
What Translation Options Does Teams Offer?
Before we jump into the steps, it helps to know what’s available. Microsoft Teams gives you three main ways to handle language translation in meetings:
- Live Translated Captions — See real-time captions in your own language while someone else speaks in theirs
- AI Interpreter (Copilot-powered) — Hear the meeting audio translated into your language in real time, like having a live interpreter in your ear
- Human Language Interpretation — The organizer assigns a real human interpreter to a language channel, and participants tune in to hear them
Each one serves a slightly different purpose, so I’ll explain all three with steps.
Turn On Translate in Microsoft Teams Meeting
Here I will show you 3 methods on how to turn on translation in Microsoft Teams Meeting.
Method 1: Turn On Live Translated Captions in a Teams Meeting
This is probably the most common thing people look for — seeing captions on screen, translated into your language, while the meeting is happening live.
What You Need
Live translated captions are available with a Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Here’s the thing though: if the meeting organizer has one of those licenses, everyone in the meeting can use translated captions — even if they don’t have the license themselves. So it’s worth checking with your IT admin if you’re not sure.
Steps to Turn On Live Translated Captions
- Join your Microsoft Teams meeting.
- In the meeting controls at the top, click More actions (the three-dot icon).
- Select Language and speech, then click Show live captions.
- Once captions appear at the bottom of your screen, look for Caption settings to the right of the captions bar.
- Click Caption settings > Language settings.
- Make sure the Meeting spoken language is set correctly — this tells Teams what language the speaker is actually using.
- Toggle on the Translate to option.
- From the dropdown, choose the language you want the captions translated into.
That’s it. The captions will now show up in your chosen language in real time.
Quick Example
Say your colleague is presenting in Spanish and your Spanish isn’t great. You turn on live captions, set the meeting spoken language to Spanish, and then set “Translate to” as English. From that point, every word they say in Spanish appears as English captions on your screen — without them needing to do anything differently.
Supported Languages
Teams supports translation into over 30 languages including English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), and more.
Method 2: Enable Human Language Interpretation (For Meeting Organizers)
This one is for meeting organizers — especially if you’re running large multilingual meetings, international webinars, or town halls where you have a professional interpreter available.
With this method, you assign a real person as an interpreter for a specific language pair. Attendees then tune into that interpreter’s audio channel during the meeting.
Steps for Organizers: Enable Language Interpretation Before the Meeting
- Open Microsoft Teams and go to your Calendar.
- Click + New Meeting or open an existing scheduled meeting.
- Fill in the meeting details, then click Meeting options.
- In Meeting Options, go to the Roles tab.
- Toggle on Enable language interpretation.
- In the Search for interpreters field, search for the person you want to assign as an interpreter. Note: they must already be added as a required attendee.
- Set their Language pair — for example, English → French.
- Click Apply.