3 Best Ways to Turn On Translate in Microsoft Teams Meeting [Step-by-Step]

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

1. Join your Microsoft Teams meeting.
2. In the meeting controls at the top, click More actions (the three-dot icon).
3. Select Language and speech, then click Show live captions.

4. Once captions appear at the bottom of your screen, look for Caption settings to the right of the captions bar.
5. Click Caption settings > Language settings.
6. Make sure the Meeting spoken language is set correctly — this tells Teams what language the speaker is actually using.
7. Toggle on the Translate to option.
8. 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

1. Open Microsoft Teams and go to your Calendar.
2. Click + New Meeting or open an existing scheduled meeting.
3. Fill in the meeting details, then click Meeting options.
4. In Meeting Options, go to the Roles tab.
5. Toggle on Enable language interpretation.
6. 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.
7. Set their Language pair — for example, English → French.
8. Click Apply.

Steps for Organizers: Assign an Interpreter During the Meeting

If you forgot to set it up before the meeting (it happens), you can still do it live:

1. Inside the meeting, click People in the toolbar.
2. Hover over the participant you want to make an interpreter.
3. Click More options > Make an interpreter.
4. Set their source and target languages.
5. Click Confirm.

Steps for Attendees: Listen to an Interpreter Channel

Once interpretation is set up by the organizer:

1. In the meeting, click More actions > Language and speech > Interpreter.
2. Select the language channel you want to listen to.
3. Adjust the balance slider to control the mix of original and interpreted audio.

Method 3: Translate Chat Messages in a Teams Meeting

While not a “meeting translation” in the traditional sense, this one comes up a lot — and it’s worth covering.

If someone sends a chat message in a different language during or outside of a meeting, Teams can translate it on the spot.

How to Translate a Chat Message in Microsoft Teams

1. Hover over the message you want to translate.
2. Click the three-dot menu (More options) on the message.
3. Select Translate.

Teams will translate the message in-line, right where it appeared.

To Automate It:

If you always want messages in certain languages translated automatically:

1. Click your profile picture in Teams.
2. Go to Settings > General.
3. Scroll to Translation settings.
4. Configure which languages Teams should automatically offer to translate.

Which Method Should You Use?

Here’s a quick way to think about it:

• Just want to read translated captions? → Use Method 1 (Live Translated Captions)
• Want to hear the meeting in your language without reading? → Use Method 2 (AI Interpreter with Copilot)
• Running a large professional event with a real interpreter? → Use Method 3 (Human Language Interpretation)
• Someone sent a chat message in another language? → Use Method 4 (Translate Chat Messages)

A Few Things to Keep in Mind

• Live translated captions require Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot. If you’re on a basic Microsoft 365 plan, check with your IT admin about your license.
• The AI Interpreter specifically needs a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. It’s one of the newer Copilot-powered features.
• Human language interpretation is a generally available feature — no premium license needed for that one, as of mid-2025.
• Caption accuracy improves when you set the correct spoken language — always double-check the “Meeting spoken language” setting before your meeting starts.
• For best results with captions, speak clearly and avoid noisy environments. Teams uses Azure Cognitive Services under the hood for speech recognition, so microphone quality genuinely makes a difference.
• Caption data is not stored — Teams deletes it after the meeting ends, so no worries about that from a privacy standpoint.

Conclusion

Microsoft Teams has come a long way with multilingual meeting support. Whether you need a quick caption translation for a one-off meeting or you’re setting up a fully interpreted international conference, there’s a feature for that.

Start with live translated captions if you’re just looking for the simplest solution. If your organization is on Microsoft 365 Copilot, the AI Interpreter is worth exploring — it makes multilingual meetings feel surprisingly natural. And if you’re organizing big events with professional interpreters, the built-in interpretation feature handles that cleanly too.

The key is knowing which tool matches your situation, and now you know exactly where to look.

Also, you may like some more Teams tutorials:

• Disable Notifications During a Meeting in Microsoft Teams
• Find Someone on Microsoft Teams
• Archive Files in Microsoft Teams
• Zoom In on Microsoft Teams